


Everything You Ever Wanted

by heymacareyna



Category: Psy-Changeling - Nalini Singh
Genre: Advent Calendar, Advent Calendar Drabble, Drabble, Drabble Collection, F/M, Fluff, MY BABIES, Psy-Changeling Advent Calendar 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-04-30 11:43:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 27,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5162624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heymacareyna/pseuds/heymacareyna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of Psy-Changeling drabbles. Minor spoilers for Shards of Hope.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mercy/Riley - Team Captains/Rivals

Mercy glanced around the clusters of people scattered around the lawn. She sighed and leaned against her best friend Dorian, who promptly brushed her off. She leaned right back, and this time he allowed the contact. “You know I love a good party,” she said, “but I don’t know that this qualifies.”

“Then leave,” Dorian said. “They didn’t invite you so you could just come and judge them.”

“Well, then, that was their mistake.” The local military base, home mostly to an elite branch called the Arrows, had opened their doors for the first time. She’d only come because her friend/coworker Judd had asked her to. That and, well, he’d said the word _party_. Mercy was in desperate need of a good _fiesta loca_.

 She’d forgotten to take into account their differences in personality and the fact that they did not run in the same circles. Most of the people here were giving her a wide berth. Some of them were even in uniform despite having the day off. _Have none of these people ever heard of civvies?_ she wondered.

Across the way, in someone’s backyard, clusters were merging to form what might be called a crowd… in front of two soccer goals. Her eyes and ears perked up. Games?

Dorian followed her gaze and grinned. “Oh, thank God. Let’s go check it out.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.”

They bounded over with almost feline grace and speed, dodging all the people who had the misfortune to wander into their path. They skidded to a stop in time to hear a lithe guy with lake-blue eyes start to lay out the ground rules. Pretty standard soccer stuff.

Mercy half-listened while tying her long red hair back in a ponytail—and found that her eye wandered to a solid guy standing across the way. He could have been an Arrow, with how stiff he stood, but she quickly realized he wasn’t. His hair was too long to meet regulations, long enough to dance in the breeze, and something about the broad shoulders and wall-strong build somehow didn’t scream _military type_. He looked like he needed some alcohol to take the edge off… but heck if he wasn’t attractive.

“….captains,” announced the lean guy. “Riley, you wanna take one?”

Mercy’s eyebrows jumped a mile high when the Wall—Riley, apparently—nodded once and stepped out in front of the crowd. _He does not seem like the front-and-center type,_ she thought, eyeing him up, _but he looks comfortable up there. What the heck._ He interested her too much. She knew he wasn’t her type, knew she probably wasn’t his. _Must be the lackluster party getting to me._ But when the lean guy, Drew, asked for another team captain, she found herself stepping through the crowd, head high, one hand raised lazily.

“I’ll take the second team,” she said, but her eyes were on one person only.

Riley cocked his head, and as he stared right back at her, that boring mask cracked to reveal a much more interesting side to him. His chocolate eyes gleamed; very full lips quirked in a challenging smile.

Mercy bared her teeth in an equally predatory grin. When Drew began to assign people to teams, she leaned over to whisper sweet nothings in her opposing captain’s ear: “I’m going to destroy you.” On the field and off.

His expression didn’t change, and for a disappointing second, she thought he wouldn’t rise to the bait. Then, in a low voice: “You’re welcome to try, kitty cat.”

A reference to the semi-abstract tiny gold leopard pinned to her swooping neckline. “Try not to cry too hard when you lose. It’s embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not in the habit of losing on purpose—and that’s the only way that would happen.”

But a little girl came up to her then with wide eyes and bullet-fast questions about who was going where and when, so she had to crouch down and try to sort it out, which unfortunately forced her to cut off the most interesting conversation she’d had all afternoon, possibly all week. By the time the kid wandered off, the teams were splitting to take their positions on the field, and Riley was nowhere in sight. She huffed out a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding and trotted out to join her teammates and take her place in the center for kickoff.

The field wasn’t that big, and he was too a striking figure to overlook. So where was he?

A short whistle blew to mark the beginning of the game. She turned to face forward—and there he was, one foot extended in a mirror image of her own.

The gleam of canines. “Game on, kitty cat.”

He reminded her of nothing so much as a wolf, and though she’d never been a dog person, she was eager to tangle with this one. “Try me.”

In sync they darted forward, toes connecting on the black-and-white ball once, twice, three times before—“Ha!” Mercy tapped it into the air and danced around him with lightning speed. She was off, gone, earth pounding beneath her. Teammates—hers, his—swarmed, and she passed to Dorian.

A solid presence hot at her back. “You’re pretty fast.” The compliment sounded half-sarcastic, not a come-on in any sense, but the moment Riley broke the contact, Mercy wanted to follow him, wanted more. So she took the chase back up, and she didn’t let up until Drew blew the whistle for a lunch break.

Hands atop her head as she attempted to catch her breath, Mercy grinned. Her whole body glowed warm and well-used from the exertion. This was definitely worth the trip out here.

That stunning low voice came from behind her: “Not a bad game.”

She spun slowly on her heel, letting her hands fall to her sides. Riley was smirking, his arms were crossed over his chest, and every inch of him looked positively delectable. “I like to play,” she said archly. The unspoken follow-up: _Do you?_

He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t stupid. “I rarely take the time off,” he admitted with an inclined head and an unwavering gaze, “but maybe I just need the right playmate.”

Her hands went to her hips, and a dangerous feline smile curled on her face. “Let’s go again after lunch, one on one,” she challenged him. “Loser buys coffee.”

Oh, he liked the sound of that. “Sounds like a plan.” And as a man of his word, he’d stick to that plan.

Because no matter the outcome of the game, if this woman wanted to get to know him, he had already come out a winner.

 _But_ , he acknowledged with a grin and a quick selfish glance over her curves, _I still plan to win the soccer game too._


	2. Angel and RainFire - Eye of the Tiger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> No romance, just a bunch of leopards teasing their tiger packmate.

Angel: silent. Strong. Solitary.

And a rare tiger changeling.

He had learned to love his species, and his pro-solitude personality. RainFire was a blessing—coming around him when he needed support, dispersing when he needed to walk alone for a while. He’d actually made friends, true packmates, which was more than he would have expected a few years ago.

Sometimes, though… having packmates felt like more trouble than it was worth.

Angel strode down the hall, mentally preparing himself for the afternoon’s training session. And he heard it. The sound from the hot place.

_BOM. Bom bom BOM._

_Oh no,_ he thought, _not today._

_Bom bom BOM. Bom bom BOMMMM._

He tried to block it out, but as always, the instrumental intro weaseled in past all his natural shields and infiltrated his brain. It grew louder, and then Finn’s nurse Hugo strolled past, holding up his phone and singing subvocally, “Rising up… back on the street… Did my time, took my chaaaances…”

Angel gritted his teeth but kept his expression neutral. Sometimes if he pretended not to notice, they gave up.

“Went the distance, now I’m back on my feet, just a man and his will to survive…”

Apparently today was not one of those days.

He continued to ignore the nurse’s off-key serenading until he was able to escape into the training room, and even when he shut the door behind him, he could hear the nurse laughing. _What did I do to deserve this?_   the tiger asked the heavens silently as he began to warm up.

* * *

 

A few days later, Angel walked into the cafeteria and into the arms of Jojo, who was joyfully showing off a drawing he couldn’t make heads or tails of. “Issa leopard like me!” she declared.

_Oh._ He decided to take her word for it. “Very nice.” He petted her hair.

“You’re not a leopard though,” she considered, tiny fingers going to her mouth.

He tensed—not against the reminder, but against the knowledge that if she said the word aloud, it would summon the song. “You’re right,” he said quickly, lowly. “Where’s your mom?”

The mention of her mother failed to distract her. “How come you’re a tiger, Angel?”

The entire cafeteria seemed to go silent.

Back stiff, he resigned himself to his fate.

It was Finn, the supposedly _kind_ and _generous_ healer, who started it: “Rising up, straight to the top, had the guts got the glory.”

Remi, of all people, joined in with a feral grin, “Went the distance, now I’m not gonna stop.”

“Just a man and his will to survive…”

Jojo looked up at him with wide, innocent eyes, but she was suppressing a grin. It took him a second to realize the terrible truth: he’d been set up.

“Careful, cub,” he warned, but he patted her head before fording through the badly harmonizing tables to get some lunch.

* * *

 

A week passed in radio silence. Angel didn’t relax completely, but he dared to hope that the running joke had finally run its course. At Remi’s request, he joined a group of both juveniles and adults for some training games, and no one so much as hummed. Finally he could concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing instead of constantly keeping an ear out for the theme song he never wanted.

He and Lark were assigned cleanup duty afterward. She nosed around in his personal life—or tried, at least, given that he wasn’t much of a talker—while she swept up the mess. “Did you like that last game? I’ve never played it before.”

“Neither have I.” He collected the dirty jerseys off the ground where everyone had dumped them. “It went quickly. I was hoping for more time to hone our techniques.”

“So many times,” she agreed with a nod, “it happens too fast. You trade your passion for glory.”

 _No._ He froze. _No. It can’t be._

“Don’t lose your grip on the dreams of the past—” The singsong tone became actual singing, loud and deliberate. “You must fight! Just to keep! Them a _liiiive!”_

Angel snarled. Lark cackled.

Someone from the hall picked up the song and hollered, “It’s the—!”

_“Eye of the tiger!”_

Angel left. 

* * *

 Pushing each other around and laughing at stupid jokes, Theo and Lark shoved into the communal storage room.

The cousins were having such a rowdy good time that they almost missed the faint sound of another voice in the next room. Barely a whisper, but changeling hearing was acute. They shushed each other and leaned in sync towards the closed door.

Someone was folding towels, based on the rustle of fabric, and… singing to himself. A familiar voice. So low, it sounded absentminded.

“It’s the—eye of the tiger, it’s the thrill of the fight…”

They looked at each other with unadulterated glee, mouths falling open.

“Holy crap,” Lark whispered.

“Is that—?” Theo asked.

“It totally _is.”_ Feather-light, she brushed her fingers over the door. It faded open.

And revealed a shirtless Angel sifting some towels into place, lightly bobbing his head in time to the lyrics mumbling in his mouth: “And the last known survivor stalks his prey in the night—and he’s watching us all with—“

“THE EEEEEEYYYYYEEEE,” joined in Lark, so loudly and enthusiastically that he jumped and dropped his last two towels.

“Of the TIIIIIIIIGEEEERRRR,” belted both Theo and Lark.

The muscles in Angel’s jaw twitched, and then he inclined his head in silent admission that they had won this battle.


	3. Lucas/Sascha - " almost lost you" kiss

Lucas made Sascha promise to stay in the house, but when she heard a telepathic distress call, her nature threw her out the door. She had to help. But with the storm so bad and the magnetic roads acting up… on the way back, she felt the vehicle slip out of her control, and when it collided with a tree–

She stirred maybe minutes or hours or years later, whiplash stabbing her stiff muscles. A quick personal inventory revealed no obvious breaks or sprains, and she opened her eyes only to find her mate’s cat eyes staring back at her. “Lucas?” she managed. “Back up, I have to get–”

But then she realized she was no longer inside the smashed car but tucked snugly into bed, and he was having none of this moving-around business.

“You promised,” he said, voice low, entire body tense.

Sascha’s lips turned down in a frown. “I’m sorry I scared you, but… I heard someone that needed help, and I couldn’t just…”

He exhaled a long, frustrated breath. “I know,” he grumbled. “And I wouldn’t ask you to change who you are, but I– Your car was smashed. I almost _lost_ you, kitten.” Eyes darkening at the voiced thought, he pressed a hard kiss to her pulse. He soaked up the rhythm of her heart and the scent of life before raising his head and nipping at her lower lip.

“I’m sorry I scared you.” She nipped back, a lighter graze. “But not sorry I helped.”

“Of course not.” He pretended to size her up, then declared with a nuzzle, “Sometimes you’re so stubborn I can’t believe you weren’t born a cat.”


	4. Lucas/Sascha - Giggly kiss

Lucas had Naya for the day, and Sascha had planned a day out with the girls. But halfway there she realized she’d forgotten her wallet, so she turned around and  _maaaaybe_  sped a little bit to get back home.

She walked in the door and found her two favorite goofball cats playing airplane–namely, Lucas was running around, holding out Naya and blowing raspberries to make engine noises, and the baby was shrieking with glee. They didn’t even hear her come in until she started laughing. Lucas slowed down just a little and changed direction to meet her at the door. He held out Naya so she could get the first kiss, but then he leaned in to kiss his mate, and she was still giggling when she wrapped her arms around his neck and heard him purr.


	5. Lucas/Sascha - Color Sighted

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU in which everything is the same EXCEPT people see in black and white until they see their soulmate for the first time.

Sascha Duncan visited the art museum every day.

Eight o’clock every morning, Monday through Friday, and ten o’clock Saturday and Sunday. The moment the doors unlocked, she was there to stride through, night sky eyes focused and determined.

She knew the front desk workers and their schedules—Nick worked Monday and Wednesday and Friday, Ivy worked Tuesday and Thursday, Taylor worked Saturday, Vaughn worked Sunday. She knew the precise layout of the museum, the quickest routes to each exhibit, the theme and duration of all the temporary showcases that came through.

What she didn’t know was the colors of any of it all.

She told her mother Nikita that she went in order to analyze a critical facet of non-Psy culture and entertainment, because if she ever admitted she _liked_ it, she’d earn herself a one-way ticket to the rehabilitation center. Something about the collections called to her on an emotional level (another word that would get her turned into a slobbering vegetable in two seconds flat), even though she could only see in shades of black and white. This monochromatic vision was typical for Psy—they went so far as to claim that it helped them see things more clearly, without the colors influencing their logic—but she couldn’t help but feel as if she were missing out on some crucial aspect of life. Humans and changelings started out seeing only in greyscale as well, but at some point in their lives, most of them began to see in color. And apparently those color-sighted ones never looked back.

They wouldn’t admit to the Psy what exactly the catalyst was. Maybe they’d gone too long having their opinion ignored; maybe they just didn’t want the psychically gifted race to have this one insight.

But something tugged at Sascha’s insides… something that made her think that if she were ever going to find out what that catalyst was, if she could find it and use it to unlock whatever was blocking her color vision—if it would ever happen, she thought for some inexplicable reason that it might happen here. In this center of glory that even she could still appreciate to some extent.

Monday morning, she bundled herself in a form-flattering winter jacket on top of several layers of sweaters. It might have been California, but winter was winter, and today the wind chill was brutal. (Since she couldn’t truly color-coordinate, she had to make her best guess based on shade; her wardrobe was composed mostly of black pants, white shirts, and then medium accents for a belt or shoes.) Luckily, no one was here that she needed to impress, so even if she happened to put something together that wouldn’t match according to a color-sighted person, it had no long-term repercussions.

Fisting her hands in her pockets against the cutting wind, Sascha strode into the museum lobby, head turned against the sharp, low sun. She missed the van parked in the opposite parking lot—but she couldn’t miss the crowd of rowdy kids bouncing around the foyer, all shouting and laughing and pointing at one thing or another. Two twin boys no older than five had unfolded a map upside-down and were studying it with the fierce determination borne of youth.

The biggest, rowdiest cluster of tiny bodies centered around the front desk, where Nick was talking to—

Nick had red hair.

And a blue shirt, and brown eyes.

The floor tiles alternated tan and emerald, the same emerald gleaming in the text of the sign that read _San Francisco Museum of Art_.

Cream arches swirled over the entrance to the museum interior.

The twins’ sneakers were scuffed scarlet and indigo, chewed and muddied brown in the corners.

Dizzy with sheer saturation, Sascha stumbled in her heels, had to plant one hand against the wall to regain her balance.

Because redheaded Nick was talking to a tall man with black hair, golden skin, and a forest-green shirt that fit his muscled frame to nearly mathematical perfection. She couldn’t even see his face, but her gaze had landed on him and then everything had exploded into this rainbow, this cacophony of beauty and chaos and everything intrinsically _not_ Psy. Had he broken her? Or had he fit a missing piece of her back into place?

She didn’t know how long she stood there, frozen and unable to think straight, before a tiny hand tapped hers. When she looked down, one of the twin boys stood beside her, eyes big and full of life.

“Do you like the art mus’um?” he asked her, tugging at the hem of her shirt. (Which was white, but her shoes were orange! _Orange!_ What a stupendous revelation!)

“Yes,” she told him once she’d gotten over the amazement that she had orange heels on her feet, “yes, I li—I come every day.” She caught herself before the L word slipped out. No way to know who was listening.

He nodded knowingly. “The pack likes to come for field trips sometimes. Look but don’t touch.” As an example, he held up his hands and then knotted them behind his back.

Pack? Sascha looked over the roughhousing children, realized they must be a collection of local changelings. But she wasn’t familiar enough with local species to know exactly what kind they were. “Do you know why you can’t touch?” Changeling culture, she’d been told, relied heavily on tactile contact.

His head bobbed up and down. “If we touch it, we might kill the art.”

A strong verb from such a little mouth. Curious. She had to suppress an inquisitive tilt of her head. Clearly the changelings couldn’t be as stupid and animalistic as they were purported to be—not if they valued culture and history enough to engrain respect for it in even the youngest members of their packs. Perhaps she would share this discovery with her mother… or perhaps she would keep it to herself, a treasure to hold close to her chest. Like color.

 _Oh no,_ she realized suddenly, her stomach dropping in horror. _How will I hide my color sight?_ Nikita would notice, the _Council_ would notice, and she’d be outed not as a mere failed cardinal but as a fundamentally _broken_ Psy. And then she’d be destroyed from the inside out.

“Julian, come here,” called a deep male voice, sounding distracted. “I don’t— _augh.”_

Sascha looked up from the five-year-old, Julian apparently, in time to see a look of wonder, of confusion, of awe, widening the cat-green eyes of the man at the front desk as he stared at her. His jaw hung, his sentence left unfinished in his shock. It took her half a second to deduce what had happened… to realize that he had gained his color sight right then and there.

His gaze darted around, the open-mouthed look of shock curving into an amazed grin. _Does the feline side of him see differently than the human side of him?_ she wondered, not knowing why she recognized the animal in him faster than in Julian. _Does his cat take a special pleasure in color?_

One of the children hopped across the emerald tiles to ask him a question, and Sascha heard two syllables of critical information. “Lucas?”

Attention diverted, the man paused and crouched down to attend to the kid’s needs, and Julian patted the Psy’s side again. “Do you know Lucas?”

She looked down, saw only childish curiosity. He didn’t seem to know that her entire world had just been turned inside out. “No,” Sascha said, her fingers grazing his in unusual physical contact. “No, I don’t know Lucas.” But she needed to remedy that, and fast, because now he was straightening to his full height and waving for the children to gather around him and the other adult with him, a blond man with a surfer’s good looks. The tiny bodies hustled at the command despite its nonverbal nature, and she hypothesized that he must have a high position in the pack hierarchy, although she didn’t know enough about the precise positions to guess which one. The group went into the first gallery, with Lucas casting one last cat-curious glance her way before he disappeared.

Wary of breaking a stiletto in her haste—or, alternatively, alerting anyone to her vastly compromised mental state—Sascha took slow, measured steps in walking to the front desk. “Morning,” she said to Nick, who nodded and smothered a yawn.

“Those changeling kids can be a handful. Sure you want to do your walkthrough right now?”

Oh, yes. Yes, it was definitely what she wanted to do. But for the sake of her façade, she said, “It won’t be a problem. I plan to divert my usual route to allow an appropriate amount of space.”

That was a lie. But Nick accepted it for the bland fact she presented it as. “All right. If you need anything, let me know.”

“Of course.” She took a map, though she didn’t need it, and strode through the entrance with her best Neutral face. It was all too easy to follow the sounds of the pack kids, with the overlapping voices and the clomping of tennis shoes providing a clear auditory path. And with her long legs and the inherent impossibility of herding children efficiently, it took mere minutes before she reached them—and the black-haired man, Lucas, turned to meet her as if he’d known the exact moment she would come around the corner.

“Who are you,” he said in an undertone, and it wasn’t a question.

She didn’t extend her hand, despite her uncharacteristic urge— _need_ —to find out what his skin felt like. “My name is Sascha Duncan,” she replied in the same low voice, but in her coolest Psy tone. “And you are…?”

His brow furrowed as he tried to read her. “Lucas,” he said finally. “Lucas Hunter.”

“Mr. Hunter,” she repeated, drawing it out just to try out the taste of his name on her tongue, “can you please explain to me what just happened?”

She heard his breath catch.

A male voice from the other wall: “Luc, the natives are getting restless.”

“Take them to the next exhibit, Dorian,” he called back, his striking green eyes never leaving hers. “I’ll be there in a minute.”

It was a testament to Lucas’s authority and trustworthiness, Sascha thought, that the other man did so without question. The clamor faded, muffled by walls, and Lucas cocked his head in a very catlike motion. “Tell me what happened to you,” he offered smoothly, “and I’ll see if I can shed any light on the situation.”

It didn’t escape her that that left him in control of how much to share, but she was already in the dark (figuratively speaking, now that she was _color sighted!)._ It couldn’t be helped: she was going to have to trust him to be honest with her. Psy were the ones who prevaricated, stretched the truth to meet their business needs. Changelings could be brutal, but at least they had authenticity on their side.

So she told this near-total stranger how her world had exploded into Technicolor in the moment she laid eyes on him, and to her mixed relief and discomfort, he stepped closer to her, nothing of deceit in his expression.

“Sascha,” he murmured, somehow managing to make her name sound like a sultry invitation to sin, “you and I have a lot to talk about. Walk with me.”

She fell into step beside him, in _spite_ of and not _because_ of the autocratic command. For the first time, she saw every exhibit in full, glorious color. And her heart seemed to expand as he explained the concept of mating.


	6. Lucas/Sascha - Adopting a Pet

Lucas stood by Sascha in the door of the Humane Society, Naya in his arms, and his little princess reached both arms out for the animal that had captured her attention:

_“Puppy!”_

He glowered behind her back. “How did I raise a child with such terrible taste?” he muttered to his mate, who laughed.

“Maybe it’s time for you to learn to be a little less discriminatory,” she teased.

Naya shook her entire body, trying to get her father to let her run to the _(of_ _all breeds!)_ husky that sat mere feet away.

Lucas held on to her stubbornly. “I’m not discriminating,” he insisted lowly. “Cats are just better than dogs, that’s all.”

Sascha pursed her lips despite the irrepressible smile curving them. “But our child wants a dog.”

“Our child is young and doesn’t know what she wants.”

“Lucas Hunter!” She threw up her hands and then reached out to take Naya from him. He released the toddler, only to have his jaw drop when his mate set her on the ground. Tiny legs flew her away at an unlikely speed to tackle-hug the wolflike pet. “You are being ridiculous and you know it.”

 _“Tammy’s_ brats knew enough to get a kitten,” he grumbled. “Why does it have to be _my_ cub that’s got her priorities mixed up?”

“It’s a good thing,” Sascha sighed for the thousandth time. “Naya’s growing up in a world where our packs are close enough to almost be one. Julian and Roman didn’t have that.”

The leopard alpha’s lips thinned with frustration.

Able to recognize a losing battle when she saw one, the empath slid her hands under his shirt for skin-to-skin contact. A begrudgingly pleased purr rumbled in his throat. Encouraged, she nuzzled into his throat where it curved into his shoulder. “We can take her to the cat rooms,” she compromised, “but if she still wants a puppy after that, she can have a puppy.”

He made a noncommittal noise.

She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes. _“She can have a puppy.”_ Intimidation wasn’t her usual method of obtaining consensus, but she wasn’t mated to an alpha for nothing.

Lucas held her gaze as he considered the deal. “Every single cat room,” he said finally.

A smile spread slowly over Sascha’s face, and she pulled him in for a kiss.


	7. Faith/Vaughn - Keeping Warm

Jaguars, as more solitary creatures than leopards, like to roam from time to time. After mating with Faith, Vaughn considered continuing on these roams by himself. This thought didn’t last very long. The idea of being separated from his mate for months at a time burned him. But he didn’t want to force her to leave the home she’d only just recently settled into, either. So he stayed in DarkRiver territory, growing more restless and irritable each day.

Eventually Faith tired of his moodiness and bullied him into telling her what was irking him. Unable to lie, he explained, and she thought on it for a day or two before giving him an unexpected response:

“Take me with you.”

He hesitated only long enough to make sure she was serious, and then he took her up on the offer not a full week later. A single bag for each of them, an approval of leave from Lucas, and they were out.

Faith and Vaughn hiked in the Sierra Nevada mountains, skirted the edge of the desert, set up camp in a corner of forest where no light pollution glared in the midnight sky. Eager to soak up all the experiences she could, she rested her back against a tree and tilted her head back so she could spin and try to take it all in at once. Innumerable stars gleamed above them, as varied in intensity yet uniquely beautiful as the minds of the PsyNet.

Despite the oversized sweatshirt she was swimming in, she shivered a little when a breeze cut cold through the trees. The Vaughn smell drifted up to tickle her nose, and she assumed it was just the movement of the fabric until solid, warm arms wrapped around her. The hard edges of his muscled body pressed close against every inch of her tiny frame, acting as both a space heater and a lee from the wind, and she snuggled back against him.

“Cold?” he rumbled before pressing a hot kiss to the side of her neck.

She wriggled. “Not right _now.”_

But he correctly inferred that she _had_ been, so he started a laz-fire near their campsite. She crouched to warm herself in front of the flickering holographic flames, and he waited two seconds before pulling her into his lap and curling himself around her. It took only moments for her to heat up to a comfortable temperature, and she settled in, more than content to spend the whole night right where she was.

“I like having you around,” he said forty minutes later. The ultimate jaguar compliment.

Voice husky with sleepiness, she teased, “Well, I was considering leaving you for another man, but now I’ll rethink it.”

He growled, and his grip tightened.

Laughing, she reached up through his arms to comb her fingers through his hair. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’re _mine.” Forever._

He didn’t reply, but he tucked his chin over her head. Satisfied, she closed her eyes and let herself drift off to sleep in the embrace of her mate.


	8. Judd/Brenna - "I'm Too Hot" "Hot Damn"

At the opening notes of a favorite song, Brenna turned up the radio in her car. “Judd Lauren,” she declared over the pulse of bass, “you are going to sing along this time if I have to tie you up and beat you with a stick.”

Wisely he chose not to point out that he could just teleport away.

She reminded him of the lyrics he needed, and then she got caught up in belting out the verse at the top of her lungs. Even with the windows down, she drowned out the roar of highway wind. A few times her voice cracked with the intensity of her melodramatic singing, and she only laughed and picked it right back up. Judd watched her, eyes fascinated and smile fond. Mere years ago he would never have thought he could feel anything, and now emotion— _love_ —was so big in his chest he thought he might explode.

“I’M TOO HOT!” she hollered, and then turned to point at him with an open, expectant grin.

“Hot damn,” he rumbled in a deadpan.

She giggled, as he’d hoped she would. “CALL THE PO-LICE AND THE FIREMAN!”

“I’m too hot,” he sighed, a smile curving his lips despite himself.

Brenna grinned in wolfish agreement. “HOT DAMN!”

The words felt foreign, and he played up the stiffness by over-enunciating, “Make a dragon want to retire, man.”

“I’M TOO HOT!”

“Hot damn,” he agreed.

“SAY MY NAME YOU KNOW WHO I AM!”

“I’m too hot.”

“HOT DAMN!” And she picked up the next line for him, but he said it with her anyway: “Am I bad ’bout that money? Break it down.”

The wind was loud enough that she almost didn’t hear him continue to sing along without being asked: “Girls, hit your hallelujah.”

She beamed and howled, “OOOOH!”

“Girls, hit your hallelujah.”

“OOOOH!”

“Girls, hit your hallelujah.”

“OOOOH!” She glanced his way then and dissolved into laughter, unable to finish the rest of the chorus. He basked in her joy, felt it as his own through the mating bond. Enrique had hurt her, changed her, but he hadn’t broken her. Something as simple as silly singing in the car had seemed impossible after her rescue, yet now she ruled herself.

The bright pop music thudded in the speakers. Brenna reached for Judd’s hand and curled her fingers around his. He lifted their entwined hands and pressed a smile of a kiss to her knuckles, content in this impossibly happy life they were building together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Uptown Funk" belongs to Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson.


	9. Dorian/Ashaya - Gifts in the Mail

Ashaya’s work had taken her to Ethiopia, and Dorian was too tied up with sentinel work to travel with her. Vasic’s first priority was the development of the Arrow valley. So the pair made do with phone calls, telepathy through the mating bond, and the rare brief face-to-face visit.

It was the end of the first week, when Dorian was starting to really feel his mate’s absence, that he arrived at work to find a small FedEx box sitting on his desk. He hadn’t ordered anything recently, and the return address was smudged with rain, but he did a quick safety check and, judging it harmless, slit the tape with his pocketknife. A little shake, and onto the desk tumbled a wrapped-up little parcel that smelled faintly of Shaya. He tore it open… and cracked his first grin of the week.

His genius Psy had sent him a rock.

His leopard rolling happily in the emotions behind her gift-giving, he thumbed over the rough edges before setting it gently down beside his monitor.

“Who’d you shoot?” Mercy asked as soon as she came in, smacking her fist on each of his shoulders as she passed by.

“It’s about to be you,” he countered without missing a beat.

A flash of playful teeth. “Good, I could use an easy workout.”

On Monday, a flat envelope awaited him. This time he was expecting that just-barely-a-trace-of-Ashaya scent, and he pulled out a collection of photographs. Mostly non-classified documentation of her research, but interspersed with selfies taken with the other scientists, with new friends she’d made. It struck him as odd that she’d opted to develop and mail physical photos, but then he realized—she knew him and his changeling love for tactile, physical records. Purr rumbling in his throat, he propped them up behind the rock.

When he received a single-use pair of latex gloves on Friday, he had already sent off a package back towards her, a brand-new pocketknife to match his own favorite.

By the time Vasic brought her home a month and a half later, Dorian’s desk was all but covered in the basically useless gifts she’d sent him. She dropped her bags at the door of his workroom and flew toward him; he caught her half in the air and hugged her so tightly neither of them could truly breathe for several minutes.

Finally they broke apart, and Dorian’s eyes went to the floor, where one bag had spilled open and dumped tens of knives, flash drives, and spare charging cords. His leopard preened. Ashaya followed his gaze and laughed. “Thank you for your gifts,” she whispered, tugging him close again for a kiss.

He shook his head and gave a smile that only she ever got to see. “Thank you.” He had never been so happy to get useless junk in the mail.

 _But,_ he had to admit as they kissed with the pent-up heat of two months apart, _gifts are nothing compared to having her in person._

 

 


	10. Mercy/Riley - Tango Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This ended up being worked into my longer tango-night fic, but since it was originally written for the advent calendar of drabbles, I'm posting it here as well.

Coming over straight from work, Riley shouldered through the ballroom doors and immediately looked around for his mate— _there she is._ Sweeping through a dramatic flourish with her best friend, Dorian. Her red hair was braided and knotted up around her head, showcasing her elegant neck and sleek white dress. His wolf preened with pride for her.

The pair finished the song with a low dip, and when Dorian let Mercy up, she looked right at Riley and lit up. Saying something (thanks? goodbye?), she hurried across the dance floor to greet him with an enthusiastic kiss.

“Maybe I’ll be late more often,” he deadpanned when she let him take a breath.

She grinned, her leopard flashing in her eyes. “I wasn’t sure you’d be able to make it. Come on.” Her hand found his, and she stepped them into frame and into the dance as the next song began.

“You’re not leading,” he insisted lowly, pushing back against her.

“You need to get into dance mode,” she countered. “I’ve been here for an hour already. Chill.”

“I don’t ‘chill.’” He led her in a turn, and though her eyes narrowed, she followed it through without missing a beat. But as soon as they were back in position, she took the lead again. _“Mercy.”_

 _“Riley,”_ she replied, her tone as playfully seductive as his was frustrated. Her lieutenant sometimes needed a reminder that his sentinel could match him. And she liked leading—she could spin herself ten times in a row without getting dizzy. Which she did then, just for kicks.

“This is such a cat dance,” he sighed, not for the first time since he’d started attending the DarkRiver tango nights with her.

“Poor wolf pup.” She leaned toward him in a long corté, then took a step back and drew him towards herself in a mirror-image move. “Needs to learn some flexibility.” As an example, she led them into a series of quick progressive pivot turns, inner thighs and knees pressed against each other as they whirled. Not for the first time, his sober grace surprised her—he was so big and solid, it was sometimes easy to forget this side of him existed in full force. The side that, despite his complaints, could totally keep up with the demands of the feline tango.

His eyes went wolf-amber when she brought them to a fifth-position break, but he didn’t challenge her dominance again. If anything, he became a smoother follower, moving through every lead with confidence. Long steps advanced them counterclockwise around the room until the popping Latin beat rose to an end, at which point Mercy spun them out for a dramatic open fan, feet pointed and arms flared out away from each other. A more advanced move, expertly executed.

Breath coming a little quickly, they shared a grin, and then Riley tugged Mercy toward himself and dipped her so low the thick knot of her hair grazed the floor. She let her head fall back, baring her throat, and he pressed an open kiss to her pulse. A few packmates laughed and wolf-whistled.

“Song’s over,” he told her, the words subvocal. His expression revealed nothing, but his eyes gleamed with the message: _Game’s on._

She grinned.

He hauled her back upright, turning her in tightly so she ended up pressed to his chest. Their frame shifted infinitesimally, hands adjusting, weight redistributing to the opposite feet.

And then Riley took the first step forward.

 

 


	11. Drew/Indigo - Fake Proposals AU

Drew knelt in front of Indigo, one hand holding hers and the other reaching smoothly into his jacket pocket. He pulled out a ring. “Indigo Riviere,” he said, “will you marry me?”

She gasped, eyes glistening. “Yes, of course!”

An open smile split his face. He slipped the ring on her finger before rising to press a kiss to her lips. Her hands found the back of his neck and pulled him closer, and the restaurant around them erupted into applause and wolf whistles.

Moments later, when Drew forced himself to pull away, their waiter arrived with a large cheesecake. “To celebrate your big day!” he exclaimed.

Indigo beamed, wiping her eyes. “Thank you so much!”

Between the two of them, they downed three-fourths of the dessert; they took the rest home in a box. On their way out the door, other patrons kept coming up to congratulate them, hugging Indigo and slapping Drew on the back or shoulder. _Good luck to you both! I can tell you’re happy together! Such mates!_ Once they made it out, he wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and they strolled to their car.

And they slid in and grinned at each other.

“I told you they’d give us cheesecake,” Indigo preened, rubbing her over-full stomach with one hand. “It’s the best.”

Drew hooked one arm around the back of his seat and backed out of the parking spot. Lake-blue eyes gleamed with mischief. “And I’ve never been so glad you were right.” He pulled out onto the highway. “How do you manage that crying-on-command thing?”

“Practice. Isn’t it impressive?”

He cut his eyes toward her and, at the stop sign, leaned over to kiss her again. “Very.”

“Where are we going on Thursday?” she asked, pulling off the ring and passing it back to him once they were out of sight of the restaurant.

He pocketed the small but convincingly diamond-like cubic zirconia ring. “I was thinking Cheesecake Factory, the one on Main Street. Good odds of cheesecake there.”

She shook her head. “We already went there.”

He laughed. “Nope,” he corrected cheerfully, “we went to the one off the interstate. The one on Main won’t recognize us.”

This she considered. Then she bared her teeth in a grin. “Sounds like a plan.”

So, two days later:

“Indigo, will you marry me?”

This time the tears were already streaming down her face, and only sheer determination kept him from cracking up. But it was worth it when the manager brought out a selection of cheesecake slices, all different flavors. The two of them played this up for maximum effect by feeding each other small, sexy bites of each kind—and then Indigo shoved a too-large forkful into Drew’s mouth and cracked up while he tried not to choke.

“I’m going to kill you,” he garbled, but it came out _Imma kih oo,_ and she just laughed harder and then kissed him once he’d swallowed. Again they took home a box of leftovers.

Saturday night they got no dessert, but the restaurant paid for their meals, so they decided it was worth it. Still, desserts took precedence, so they went out again Sunday night instead of waiting a day or two for safety.

This time Drew made reservations at Indigo’s favorite restaurant, had them both dress up in formal wear, preordered blue-violet roses and had them ready for her at the table when they arrived. A long, leisurely meal passed by in easy conversation and sporadic kisses, until, before the waitress could return and offer dessert, he knelt before her for the fourth time in the last week. He took her hand in both of his, shook off the jittery nervousness, and looked deep into the eyes that entranced him. This was the real deal.

“I’ve loved you for years,” he started, unable to quite find his balance. “You are… the most amazing person I’ve ever met. I could spend every day with you and not be bored.”

Her lips parted a little in surprise: this was new and unrehearsed. _Is he hoping for extra free food?_

“I’ve never been as happy as I have been the last year since we’ve been together. Well, except the couple times I got shot,” he amended, “those weren’t fun.”

 _“What?”_ one restaurant patron asked in concern.

He ignored this and soldiered on. “But other than that. And I want to spend my entire life with you. I want to grow old with you and laugh with you in a nursing home. But we’d need to be married to share a bed there.”

From his pocket he withdrew a silver engagement ring, simply designed to showcase the diamond that glittered in the lamplight. “So, Indy, I need you to marry me.”

Looking from the stone to him, she gave a surprised wet laugh. “Of course, Drew,” she said, and kissed him. “Of course.”

Grinning into the kiss, he slipped the ring on her finger and pulled her into himself. The waitress brought out the free ice cream, and he didn’t even notice until she’d cleared her throat two or three times. Drew and Indigo disentangled long enough to enjoy the dessert, although he kept one hand on her thigh at all times, just to revel in the touch. _I’m going to have her forever,_ he realized again, and grinned.

He was still grinning when they got into the car half an hour later, unable to believe his own luck. Not that he’d really _thought_ she would say no, but there was always that chance—

“That was a good one,” Indigo said, pulling her hair back and admiring the ring. “I mean, wow. The whole speech was a nice touch, and where did you get this _ring?_ It looks so realistic!”

Drew stared at the love of his life and considered murdering her. “Are you kidding me.”

 

 


	12. Hawke/Sienna - Rushed Domestic Morning

Tuesday morning left something to be desired. Hawke needed to get to an early meeting with his lieutenants, and Sienna had a test that would make or break her university degree. Stars still studded the ink-blue sky outside their cabin, but indoors the lights brightened every room—any darkness would send the pair right back to the warm bed, an impossible dream.

The alpha gripped an apple in his teeth as he ducked shirtless into the bedroom. Tugging pantyhose up with every hop on one foot, his mate barely glanced up, then did an appreciative double take. _“Rrrrr,”_ she growled, the feral sound playful.

He turned in time to see her hike the hose up into place and smooth her skirt down. “Later,” he forced himself to say; his wolf would have liked nothing better than to stay inside with her all morning. As he shrugged on an ice-blue button-down, he strode over to straighten her slightly askew skirt.

In thanks, she plucked the apple out of his mouth, took a big bite out of the unbroken side, and then stuck it right back in place. “Shanks,” she garbled as she sidestepped to get to her pile of shoes.

She slid into a pair of scarlet heels, perfect for stomping all over a major exam. He was holding two jackets at arm’s length: she grabbed the less suitable one from him and stuck it back in the closet on her way to the bathroom. He pulled on the approved one and slid in behind her just before she could close the door.

“I have to pee,” she warned him, already pulling her hose down.

Hawke glanced over with wolf eyes even as he reached for his toothbrush. “Go right ahead.” He needed to brush his teeth, and really, it wasn’t as if he’d never seen her without pants on.

Sienna rolled her eyes and, when she had finished her business, swooped under his arm to get to the faucet. She washed her hands and then raised them so he could rinse off the foamy brush. On a less hectic morning she might have dried them on his shirt, forced him to change, but they didn’t have time for games today, so she used the towel before fixing his jacket pocket that had turned inside out.

She trotted into the kitchen to find something quick for breakfast, but seeing nothing delicious, she ended up just sticking a few pre-wrapped muffins in her bag. Not as good as anything homemade from the den, but they got the job done. Hawke, who’d come in silently behind her, pivoted around her with solid grace to get into the cupboard. Unable to resist such close contact, she rose up on her tiptoes to press a kiss to his freshly shaven cheek before breaking away to pull her keys off the coat hanger on the wall.

He tossed her an apple she’d overlooked. “Good luck on your exam.”

She caught it. “Thanks. Have fun at your meeting.”

“Unlikely.” It was only a half joke. They were all adults, but no one liked early meetings, and Jem and Kenji had been worse than usual lately. “Love you.”

This made her pause for the first time since 5:00 am. A little of the stress dissolved from her tense shoulders. “I love you too.”

Then she disappeared out the door, and he shoved a biscuit into his mouth before jamming on his shoes and heading out as well.

 

 


	13. Kaleb/Sahara - Game Night

“You need a night off,” Sahara had said.

“It’s going to be fun,” Sahara had said.

Kaleb walked into a room full of mated pairs, and only sheer willpower kept him from turning on his heel and walking right back out.

Seeing the look in his eyes, his mate grabbed him by the arm. “Don’t. This’ll be good for you.”

Kaleb disagreed, but when his mate’s cousin Faith came over, he opted to keep his mouth shut. If Sahara wanted more social time, of course she could have it—and it was an easy logical step to deduce that she felt she’d be happier with him there. So, for the good of his mate, he resigned himself to… _game night_.

 

҉

 

The first game they all crowded around was Clue, which Kaleb thought would be easy for him, given his history of murder, mystery, and secrets. He realized very quickly that he had thought wrong. The changeling pairs clearly spent too much of their free time learning the nuances of these games, the tricks and the loopholes. He and Sahara were appalled when Hawke and Sienna smugly announced that they knew the killer, location, and weapon—and were _correct_.

A mental voice as familiar as his own: _Have you played this before?_

 _Me either._ Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her chewing her bottom lip pensively, forehead creased with concentration. As wonderful as she was, his mate had no poker face. Hopefully that particular game wasn’t on the agenda for tonight. If it was, the only way they could balance out her open-book expressions would be to—

Something flared in Kaleb’s chest.

 _Sahara,_ he warned, counting on the girl who’d tried to barter for math answers, _I have a potential solution._

She saw it as he thought it, and she went silent.

_Thoughts?_

Her eyes flicked around the table, at the pairs who had seriously kicked their butts. Mischief sparked along their bond. _Let’s do it._

So they passed their cards in like everyone else, but Sahara took a quick mental inventory of the card imperfections as they passed. Creases, rips, frayed edges. She catalogued each one, cross-referenced them with each other. At the same time, Kaleb reached out with his Tk and _just barely_ nudged the currently empty envelope that would hold the answers. At this angle, the lamplight double-crossed and made the thick paper almost see-through. Almost. Not good enough.

Lucas and Sascha dealt the cards, and the games began again, but with one critical difference: a certain former Councilor and his resurrected dancer mate were now cheating. Shamelessly. Sahara peeked at cards. Kaleb made up a few “Russian” rules with such deadpan commitment that the others actually believed him. Knees conveniently bumped the table while the dice rolled. Between the two of them, they managed to pull ahead and win that game. And then the next.

But when the others’ eyes began to narrow in suspicion, Sahara wilted. _Let’s play a different game._

Kaleb’s expression never changed, but disappointment made his stomach sink. This had been… _fun_. A once foreign concept, before this woman brightened his life. _All right,_ he agreed to please her, before suggesting aloud, “What else is on the agenda?”

Looking slightly mollified, one of the cats pulled out a deck of cards. “Poker.” He dealt while his mate stroked his hair, which Kaleb deduced at least partially explained the mollification. Sahara watched this interaction as well, head tilted in eternal curiosity, and then her hand brushed the nape of Kaleb’s neck. This he liked. And he liked it even more when her other hand came to rest on his thigh. But then—stiff paper sliding between his thigh and the chair. At the next spare moment, he glanced down.

Sahara had slipped him an ace.

 _Also,_ she told him without moving to betray the conversation, _I’m pretty sure Faith and Vaughn are working towards a royal flush._

His gaze darted up to see a suppressed grin gleaming in her eyes.

Maybe not so wilted, after all.


	14. Vasic/Ivy - Trying to Build IKEA Furniture

Vasic and Ivy’s home sat nestled in sunshine and warm spring growth in the gardens, grass vibrantly green and a little too long. The picture of peace. Broken by a wordless shout and a smashing noise.

Inside, the Psy mates stood glaring down at pieces of wood that were supposed to become a bookcase. Ivy had clenched her fists and jaw, and Vasic was uncharacteristically flushed.

IKEA furniture had struck again.

“WHO DESIGNED THIS?” shouted the empath.

“I’m _literally able to move objects with my mind,”_ growled her Arrow, “and I can’t get this to go where I want it.”

She mimed strangling someone, expression screwed up with disgust. “I think my abilities would understand if I was causing pain to the person who BSed these instructions,” she gritted out.

Vasic stared at the useless slabs on the floor and then, in a resigned voice, decided, “I’m going to teleport us in a bookcase from Walmart.”

Ivy’s head jerked up. “NO,” she demanded, which surprised him enough to stop him. “We are two fully functioning adults. We can do it.”

“I’m missing an arm,” he pointed out. “Disability points. I’m teleporting it in now.”

She smacked him on the chest. “Don’t! We can figure this out!”

He admired her stubbornness, her self-sufficiency, but this was not the time for them. “This is an illogical use of our time. Why are we wasting energy on this?” He sent her an archived mental image of other ways they could be using that time and energy, and her face went red as she struggled against a smile.

But her stubbornness won out. “I’m going to get this bookshelf put together if it’s the last thing I do.” She eyed him. “And if I catch so much as a _glimpse_ of Walmart furniture, you’re sleeping at Aden and Zaira’s place tonight.”

That was a serious threat—and she’d followed up on it before. He inclined his head in acknowledgement of her wishes.

“And as soon as we finish this…” She sent him back a slightly modified version of the image. “…we are taking a good, long, well-deserved break.”

Vasic had never before felt so motivated to decipher IKEA instructions.


	15. Aden/Zaira - More Laughter Than Kiss

“I can’t believe this,” sighed Zaira, showing off bare legs crossed at the ankles. Her sleek black dress’s hemline ended several inches higher than usual, and Aden was definitely a fan of this development. To be fair, he’d seen her gaze linger on the sharp angles of his tailored three-piece suit, so he was pretty sure they were both benefiting from the night’s dress code.

“I can. Ivy’s a good influence,” he decided as he took a sip of his drink. Tonight was Vasic’s doing—Aden’s second-in-command had put his foot down and given the Arrow alpha the weekend off. And Zaira, as his mate, conveniently had very little work assigned to her. The forced vacation definitely had a tinge of Ivy empathy about it, very _you work too hard, take a break,_ although Aden knew his best friend felt the same way.

So here they were. Zaira’s legs and Aden’s shoulders in the private back room of an unreasonably expensive restaurant.

She cocked her head and looked him over. He paused with his glass at his lips, raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

“You seem a little tense,” she started. “Everything okay?”

He hesitated, then set his drink down. “I promised Vasic I wouldn’t talk work unless it was an emergency.”

Her lips parted in a knowing _aaah_. She’d have to thank the former cyborg later; she and her mate both had well-meant but definite workaholic tendencies. “Well, in that case, I withdraw the question. Is there anything I can do?”

His lips twitched and his dark angular eyes gleamed with a teasing playfulness that (it hurt her heart to remember) had once never been allowed to see the light of day. _But we’re both growing past Ming,_ she reminded herself, drawing herself up against the biting red fury of the memories. And she faded back into his small smile.

“I can think of a few things that might help,” he teased lowly.

She separated and re-crossed her legs right as she flicked a piece of bread crust right for the center of his forehead. Happily distracted, he jumped when it hit its target with perfect precision. With them separated from the restaurant, from the world, she let herself grin. And he grinned too, but with an alpha gleam that reminded her of Lucas or Remi or Hawke—and then before she knew what had happened, he’d pulled her onto his lap, her already short skirt hiked up even further when she settled to straddle him.

It could have been a compromising position, but she trusted him absolutely. He would never leave them open to attack. They were safe here.

So he tugged her chin down with a laugh and pressed an open kiss to her mouth. “Are you causing trouble?”

Eyes closing, she smiled and kissed him back, laughter a purr in her throat as her hands slipped under the collar of his shirt. “Always.”

Ticklishness had been scorched out of her, but something about the glance of his fingers over her thighs made her wriggle, pushed that purr into a full giggle. She hadn’t had any alcohol, wasn’t even buzzed, but felt that same warmth inside her simply from this time alone with Aden.

He pulled back for a moment and rested his forehead against hers. He looked lighter now, less worried, and that eased a burden on her own shoulders.

 _Happy,_ she realized, sometimes still late to recognize the emotion even between the two of them. _I am. He is._ And the possessive girl inside her relaxed.

Everything—at least right now, in this moment—was all right.


	16. Judd/Brenna - Christmas Cookies

“I’m gonna bake,” decided Brenna.

Judd’s eyes flicked up from the data he was reviewing. “That’s unlike you.” He didn’t mean it as an insult, just a statement of fact.

Thankfully his mate knew him well enough not to take offense. “I know. But I feel like it’s a good life skill to have, you know?” She shrugged. “Plus it’s Christmas. You know what that means.”

“Convincing small children that a fat, elderly Tk-V has watched them all year long?”

She threw a pillow at his head; he didn’t even have to deflect it. It hit the wall a foot to his left. “I hate you so much,” she muttered, meaning the opposite. “No, obviously, Christmas time means Christmas _cookies_. You’ve been around long enough to know that.”

He had, technically, but in fairness, none of the holidays had been truly restful until all the interracial tensions, PsyNet rot, and ten thousand other problems had been figured out. This was his first real Christmas, for all intents and purposes.

“Well,” she said, coming to the same conclusion, “I’m going to bake cookies. From scratch. And you’re going to help me.”

He scrolled down to the next page of data. “I don’t remember volunteering for that.”

She went quiet.

He glanced up.

She was glaring at him.

With a sigh he set down the datapad. “All right, baby, whatever you want.” He intentionally used one of her favorite terms of endearment under the reasoning that it would warm her back up. As predicted, she softened, though reason wasn’t why the small knot in his stomach unraveled at the sight. He just preferred— _liked_ —having her happy with him.

“What do we need?” he prompted.

Brenna grinned and smoothed a hand over his shoulder.

 

҉

 

The fire alarm blared at a slightly-less-horrible-than-normal pitch (as changeling hearing was too acute for the standard Ungodly Scream). One pan was soaking in the sink in the hopes that it wouldn’t meet the same fate as the other one, which had gone straight to the recycler. Other than the flashing red of the fire alarm, the room sat in black and shadows—then the generators kicked in, and the blown-out power revived in a warm low yellow glow.

Judd looked down at the smoke drifting from the stovetop. He looked at Brenna. Brenna looked at him.

“Don’t say it,” she sighed.

He said nothing.

A moment passed, and she held out one limp hand. “Fine.”

He took her hand and, to save the energy required by ’porting, they crept out to borrow a Pack vehicle. “I can assemble microtechnology,” she complained as they drove out to town. “I’m an Level _1._ Why can’t I work an _oven?”_

He deduced that this was a rhetorical question and that she would likely be irritated and hurt if he worked through the downhill-spiral situation to give her a logical answer. But that didn’t mean he planned to leave her to angst about it all day. “Given your highly technical areas of expertise and my lack of cooking experience,” he said, “we would have had better luck with a mentor and more practice to draw from.”

She scowled. “I wanted to be good at it on my own,” she admitted in a grumble.

They pulled into the parking lot of their destination: Kroger. “Do you want to come in?” he asked, already unbuckling his seat belt.

She hesitated, then nodded. “You don’t know what you’re looking for.”

“I imagine it would be clearly labeled,” he pointed out, but he enjoyed her presence so he didn’t protest her choice. They were in and out quickly; his mate knew what she wanted and where to find it. By the time they returned to the den, the cleanup crew had fixed up the mess that was the kitchen, and Judd and Brenna kept their heads down.

They collapsed onto the couch in their apartment and pulled out the contents of the Kroger bag: a box of sugar cookies in generic Christmassy shapes. Brenna bit the head off a reindeer. “It counts as Christmas cookies,” she muttered through the mouthful.

Lips curving in a small smile, Judd broke a Santa in half and tried it. “They’re good.”

“Good.” Disappointment still creased her brow, though.

He petted her leg where it crossed over his. “You are a smart, talented, sexy, clever woman.”

“I can’t even bake a batch of cookies.” She shoved a whole elf into her mouth.

“Don’t bad-mouth yourself. I happen to be fond of that person.”

The deadpan joke surprised a little laughter out of her. “Are you, now.”

“As it happens…” He lowered his voice and leaned in as if to whisper a carefully guarded secret: “I have a little bit of a crush on her.”

She covered her face with her hands and her shoulders began to shake, and for a worrying second he thought he’d made the wrong move, but then he heard the stifled giggles. “My big, bad Arrow is such a complete _dork._ ” The word was heavy with love, and he kissed her to remind her of how very much he valued her, baking ability or no baking ability.


	17. Hawke/Sienna - Team Captains/Rivals

Saturday had, by executive order, been devoted completely to training games. Only the pack members who had non-negotiable duties were exempt.  Now, with the sun barely orangeing the sky, Hawke towered over a cluster of red-shirted juveniles, staring hard at his mate and her own blue-shirted group a few feet away. She stared right back, cardinal eyes bright with challenge.

“My twelve-year-olds,” she threatened with a grin, “are gonna beat your twelve-year-olds into the dust.”

Her kids laughed, muttered _yeah_ and _tell ’em._ One pointed out that he was actually twelve and a _half,_ thank you very much.

Hawke grinned back, the wolf visible in his eyes. “Your twelve-year-olds will be eating my twelve-year-olds’ dust.”

“It’s just capture the flag,” whispered a small submissive, who was shushed.

“First game of the day,” Hawke announced, his normal speaking voice more than sufficient for changeling hearing in the morning quiet. “This will set the stage for everything else. Give your team—and yourself—110 percent.”  And then, angling himself to only address his kids: “We’re going to demolish them.”

The words were said in a pretend-serious tone that made both teams giggle.

Sienna tilted her chin up with a smirk. “Isn’t his confidence cute? It’ll be hilarious when we destroy them.”

A few of her kids eyed her with unconcealed awe. The others absorbed her cockiness like sponges, acknowledging this as one of the few scenarios when they were able to play with their alpha in this particular teasing way.

“No claws, no powers,” she reminded everyone. “You guys know the rules. Ready?”

“Ready!” chorused fifty preteen juveniles and one semi-sarcastic alpha.

She made a face at him. “All right, let’s break.” She ran her team deep into the forest, well out of scent and sight range for Hawke and his group. They hid their flag in the most obscure, best defended location they could find, and then they broke up into an almost military formation. She coached them, gave them pointers, but let them make the big decisions. The day’s exercises were for their benefit, not for hers.

A whistle marked the beginning of the game.

Her offense darted off in formation to search for Hawke’s team’s base. She stayed back to encourage the defense, but after a few minutes she went to make some rounds, verify none of their opponents had slipped through. She walked carefully, padding almost wolf-silent to avoid crunching leaves or sticks.

She almost missed the threads of a trap not unlike what Hawke had caught her in during their mating dance. But she saw it just in time and danced out of the way, a quick hopping step like triple-time swing—and she bumped into a warm body that had definitely not been behind her two seconds ago.

“Surprise, baby,” her mate growled smugly in her ear. “I think I won this game.”

But Sienna had tricks up her own sleeve. “I wouldn’t count on it.” Going almost cat, she darted out of his arms and up a tree, out of reach.

Her wolf huffed in mixed frustration and appreciation. “You have to come down eventually,” he pointed out. “And I can be _very_ patient.”

She bared her teeth in a grin. “So can I.” She knew she wouldn’t have to be, though. As long as she distracted him long enough…

A rallying cheer erupted from the far side of the game boundary, followed by two short whistles. Hawke’s head jerked up.

“I believe _that_ marks the end of the game,” she said archly. “Shall we go see which team came out the winner?”

He watched her with the uncanny focus of his wolf, one corner of his lips rising in a disbelieving smirk. “Surely you don’t think you tricked me.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she agreed—“I _know_ so.”

“Dinner and a full-body massage says I prepared my juveniles for exactly this situation.”

Sienna’s grin widened. “I’ll take that bet.”

When they arrived at the neutral starting ground outside the forest, Sienna’s blue-shirted kids were hollering in excitement—with Hawke’s team’s red flag clutched between them all.

Hawke turned to look at his mate, surprised and impressed. She slitted her eyes at him in a smug smile. “I’m looking forward to tonight,” she teased him.

Mmm, so was he. He hadn’t truly expected to lose that bet, but he ended up pretty happy with the results either way.


	18. Vet Waiting Room (Human/Animal) AU

The vet waiting room was filled to capacity when Sascha Duncan, cradling her beloved black cat Lucas, stepped inside. The other cats and their people stayed to the left, and on the other side of an invisible but clearly drawn line sat the dogs and _their_ people. One client came out of an exam room with a falcon and hustled out the door.

The veterinary nurse came out soon after, a sizable folder in his hand. “Hawke?”

A redheaded girl with night-sky eyes, no older than twenty, tugged a grumpy white husky to his feet and led him into the newly vacant room. The blue-eyed almost-wolf growled low at the nurse as if protecting the girl, but the nurse looked like this was standard procedure. He closed the door behind them. Hawke’s growl was still audible through the wall.

Too tired to stand longer than she needed to, Sascha took the empty seat. Lucas immediately tried to scramble out of her arms, hissing and spitting at the big chocolate Lab now sitting still and focused beside them. The big guy seemed unperturbed until an orange Ocicat snarled at him, and then his tail began to thump.

On her other side, her friend Faith stroked Vaughn, a golden Bengal with spots and build reminiscent of a jaguar, while she chatted with another girl who held in check a distinctly grumpy brown cat that bit her on the arm out of sheer spite. “Bully,” the second girl chastised her pet, and he gave a dark grumble in return. To Faith she sighed, “Clay is the grumpiest thing ever. But I love him so much.”

She wasn’t the only one play-fussing with her pet. “Dorian, no,” scolded another woman, trying and failing to extricate her yellow cat from her electric-curly hair. _“Dorian.”_ He yowled and then, once she detached him, curled up charmingly against her abdomen.

“Do you know if they’re running on time?” Sascha asked the military-proper man beside her, Judd Lauren, uncle to the redhead managing Hawke and leash-bearer to three Retriever siblings, including Riley, the focused one going out of his way to irritate/befriend Mercy the Ocicat.

Judd shook his head. He’d once been resolutely silent, but years of veterinary kinship had opened him up. “That family of tabbies came in an hour ago, including both twin kittens. The tiny things were more trouble than they anticipated. We’re forty-five minutes behind schedule now.”

From behind the closed door, Hawke gave a truly impressive growl.

The soldier gave an almost invisible smile. “But it’ll be longer now. That dog thinks he’s the alpha of everything that moves. Absolutely impossible. Sienna’s the only one who can ever get him to budge.”

Lucas climbed up onto Sascha’s shoulders to oversee his kingdom, and she laughed. “Luc has the same problem.”

Another exam room opened. A man with grey eyes and a prosthetic arm walked out with his shorter wife, who led a regal black Belgian Shepherd that made Judd’s middle Lab, Drew, perk up like a puppy. He barked and wriggled his entire body, and when she actually turned and barked back, Judd had to strain to hold his dog in check.

The couple struggled with the Shepherd for a good two minutes before compromising. To Judd: “We’ll call you to schedule a playdate. Now come on, Indigo.”

As if she understood, she followed them out the door, tail wagging. Drew bounced around before tugging his sister, Brenna, into a play fight.

Sascha smiled, fond of the siblings, of all the humans and animals in this vet office. She knew them well after all this time, though she knew the cats best.

Lucas headbutted her on the cheek and began to knead the curve of her neck. She feathered her fingers into his fur to scratch his favorite spot, between his shoulder blades.

As stressful as vet visits could be, they were one of her favorite ways to spend a Saturday afternoon. A family reunited. _But then again,_ she considered with catlike satisfaction, _I could probably feel at home just about anywhere when I have my panther with me._

 


	19. Hawke/Sienna - Snow Day

The White Zone glittered sheer white, broken up only by slim grey-brown fractals of winter-dead trees. The pups, who woke up earlier than their parents on principle, clambered onto windowsills and gaped.

“Snow day,” whispered one, and it traveled impossibly fast, replicating exponentially: _Snow day. Snow day? Snow d—snow day! Snow day Snow day Snow day!_

Then that sheet of perfect white exploded into motion and color, kids in both human and wolf forms bursting out for that glorious first heavy snow of the season. Even the older juveniles dragged themselves out of bed.

“I didn’t say it was a snow day,” said Hawke as he tugged a hat onto his mate’s head.

Sienna shoved her triple-socked feet into faux-fur-lined boots. “I think this one’s out of your hands,” she teased. In her time between the leopard and wolf packs, she’d skipped out on school and training plenty of times for self-imposed snow days with her friends. It had driven both Lucas and Hawke nuts, which was 80 percent of the fun of doing it.

He remained unswayed. “We have things to do.”

“Yeah, like play in the snow for five minutes. You sure you don’t want gloves?”

“Changelings don’t feel the cold,” he told her for the millionth time, but she was pretty sure this was just bravado. She gave him a pair of gloves and a Look, and her alpha mate pulled the gloves on. To reward his compromise, she ran her fingers through his white-blond hair and pulled him in for a playful kiss.

“Five minutes only,” he said sternly when they finally broke apart, but his voice bore the gravel of his wolf, and she knew she’d won this skirmish.

Because—as she got to witness when they joined the rest of the pack outdoors—his wolf loved the snow. They’d barely set foot in it before he responded to a pup’s outstretched hand and joined a tumble of tiny playful bodies. Flecks and clumps of snow caught in his hair, melted onto his skin. Some got in his ear and he shook his head sharply in such a wolflike movement that Sienna laughed, delighted.

Then Toby and Marlee pulled her into the fray as well, and to avoid kicking a toddler in the stomach, she dodged—and lost her balance.

Her feet skidded out from under her, sending up a cloud of white, and she collapsed hard on her side, laughing too hard to get up. A wolf pup nosed her to make sure she was okay, and she ruffled his fur in play. Mimicking the child’s motion, Hawke leaned over and nosed into her neck to kiss the few inches of skin that her twisted scarf had bared. Sienna mussed his hair and pushed him off with an open, playful grin. With her health and safety secured, the games started up again. She crawled and kicked with the best of the pups, invigorated by the chill.

And then a snowball connected with the small of her back.

Sienna whirled.

Her mate bared his teeth in a very alpha grin.

She pointed a finger at him. “You like to live dangerously.”

“I’m not worried.” His head was cocked smugly to the side. And he barely managed to avoid the snowball she lobbed straight at his forehead. “Hey!”

Sienna already had another handful of snow compressed and flying. Kids shrieked and pups yipped encouragingly, all glad to see their alpha play openly with his mate, and then joined in the snowball fight themselves. Snow traveled in clumps and in sprays, showering everyone in the area. One hit Sienna in the arm—possibly from Hawke, possibly not. She ducked to scoop up more supply, but when she straightened, he had disappeared from view. Instinctively she bent her knees and pivoted— _“Agh!”_

The snowball, large but soft, had splattered right onto her mouth.

Hawke rose from his hiding place with a huge, smug grin all over his face.

Sienna nailed that grin with a snowball of her own. The half-melted snow made a satisfying _squelch_ noise when it made impact. He had to swipe away the wet white mess with both gloved hands.

“Come here,” he play-threatened, and she made a growling noise before scrabbling to get away. The snow slowed her, though, and he caught up fast.

Hawke pulled Sienna against him, his body heat encompassing her with no indication that he planned to let go anytime soon. For all her teasing chase, she didn’t even pretend to lean away when he kissed her long and hard. She wrapped her arms around his neck and jumped to wrap her legs around his waist; his hands automatically dropped to grip her thighs, to hold her up.

A poorly packed clump of snow sailed over their heads, showering them in icy flakes. The pups giggled at the near miss. Sienna shivered at the chill and pressed closer to her own personal space heater.

“Back inside?” His question came out low, suggestive.

She laughed. “You wish. I’m going to get some snow down your shirt before we go back to work.”

 “If I get some down _your_ shirt, though, we’re going inside and you’re taking it off.” A wicked grin. “I’d hate for you to catch cold.”

“You’re so selfless.” She bit him on the jaw, more catlike than he probably cared for, and then wriggled to be let down. “Bet you can’t catch me.”

“I think we just proved that theory wrong two minutes ago.” But he let her down and gave her a five-second head start to tromp through the snow before he darted after her.


	20. Nikita/Anthony - Snowed In at the Airport

“This is the most illogical way I can think of to spend a Saturday.” Nikita would never have called her chilly commentary _complaining_ , as that would require a level of disliking the situation and she hadn’t yet become fully accustomed to the world after the fall of Silence. She was allowed to have emotions, allegedly. But she’d been in the Council too long to blindly accept everything she was told.

At her side, Anthony held his phone a little higher, trying and failing to find any signal still available in the terminal. They were the only two waiting for this flight, and the absurdly high levels of snow outside suggested it might remain that way for a while. “What do you recommend we do?” he asked, the words dry with sarcasm and frustration.

She took a deep breath to regulate her physiological response to the situation and to his tone. “You tried reaching Faith?” She’d tried ’pathing her own daughter and gotten the mental equivalent of static.

“Yes. Nothing.” He slipped his phone into his pocket. “With any luck, my secretary will reschedule my meeting. At this point, the only way I’ll make it there on time is if I spontaneously mutate a new skill set and become a Tk-V.”

Was that a joke or a statement of unlikely probability? It sounded like the humor she often heard in her meetings with the changelings, but she wasn’t sure and didn’t want to respond incorrectly, so she said, “Do you need anything to eat or drink?”

He watched her with the focus of a fellow parent and ex-Councilor. “Not at this point, but possibly in the next half hour. Do you?”

She did, but she could wait. “I’m fine, thank you.” And she actually meant the thanks—he was one of the few people who regularly verified her personal wellness. At least, verified it out of goodwill. She considered him a friend, and vice versa. Tatiana and Ming and others like them kept tabs on her too, but that was because they wanted to know how likely she was to strike out.

Anthony sat back in his seat, leaned his head back. Nikita couldn’t help but notice the classic silvery gleam in his still-thick hair. He had aged well, like herself. An intrusive thought burst into her head—what would a child from a fertilization contract between them look like?

“What are the food and drink options here?” he asked, still on the earlier topic.

She tried to stop mentally putting together the pieces of a child with red hair and angular eyes, or with sleek blue-black hair and rounded eyes. Maybe one of both. It could be an extended contract with equal parental rights.

 _Nikita, stop,_ she told herself coldly. _You are a grown woman. You know better than this._

Summoning up every compartmentalization skill she’d ever learned, she boxed up the treacherous thoughts and put them away. “I recall passing a coffee shop, a bakery, and a burgers-and-fries restaurant on our walk over. There are likely more on the other side.”

He nodded, head still back.

They fell into comfortable silence. Nikita watched the snow continue to fall to distract herself from the so very _little_ space separating her from her friend, ally, partner, whatever Anthony was to her now. The time they’d been together… it seemed both so short and so long. They were now practically inseparable; she could barely remember how it had been to know him only as the patriarch of the NightStar clan.

She mentally reached out to knock on the psychic plane, but came up against that same static. She could feel his presence, but any telepathic connection was impossible. _I’m not disappointed,_ she told herself to explain the heaviness in her chest, _just inconvenienced._

“How are Faith and Sahara?” she asked aloud. She knew about his son as well but didn’t want to bring him up in such a public area, even though they seemed alone.

Anthony raised his head and looked at her with steady eyes and a small smile. “They’re doing well. Sahara seems to be adapting well to the… change in circumstances.”

“You’ve seen the bond?” she asked, lowering her voice.

He nodded. “I’ve never seen that before in the PsyNet. One more piece of evidence that things truly are changing.”

Thinking of Alice Eldridge’s research, Nikita wondered how prevalent such bonds might have been before Silence. Had the entire Net been a web instead of a starscape? Or had that deep of a connection been rare even then? Would she have had a rope, a thread, anything connecting her to her Sascha?

Would anything have connected her to the man beside her?

He shifted in his seat, a seemingly unconscious movement. She crossed her right leg over her left. “Have you heard from Sascha recently? Is the baby doing well?”

Nikita warmed on the inside, not that she would ever admit such a flaw. “Yes, they’re well. I talked to her the other day—they were considering the possibility of traveling over the holidays.” The worst thing about the telepathic static was her inability to contact her daughter, even just to check in. She tried to reassure herself that Lucas Hunter was too protective an alpha to let his mate and their child put themselves in harm’s way, but she couldn’t know for sure what the conditions were in DarkRiver/SnowDancer territory, or whether they were even still _in_ that territory, so the logical fact fell short of full truthfulness.

Her stomach turned with a grumble, pulling her out of the silent overanalysis.

Anthony looked her over and then touched his fingertips to her bare arm. A minor touch, but one that burned with electric heat and threw her off-balance. Her eyes widened a little before she could stop the reaction. Did it have the same influence on him, or was this an unintended side effect of her earlier unprofessional thoughts?

“Let’s go see what the shops are offering,” he suggested.

His fingers were still on her.

But she wasn’t completely sure she wanted to shake him off.

“All right,” she said, voice empty of the riot of thoughts in her head. They stood in the same Psy-smooth motion. Not cat-graceful, but with precise posture and mathematical control. Despite the internal baffling chaos she was failing to defeat.

His hand fell away, and she intentionally left the space between them.

 _I’ve spent too much time dealing with the changelings,_ she decided as they headed down the terminal. _I’ve subconsciously internalized their intimacy urges._ It was irrelevant that her own urges had built up since Sascha’s birth and were limited almost strictly to the empath, Naya, and Anthony. She’d lasted this long without what the cats and wolves called “skin privileges”; she had no reason to break down now.

A young man in plaid was playing an upbeat song on his guitar when they passed him. An elderly couple sat a few seats away, holding hands with their eyes closed, smiles on their faces as they listened to the peacefully bright music. Nikita kept her chin high, her eyes on the pathway. She said nothing because she had no thoughts worth sharing. Times like this, she was grateful for her flawless conditioning.

Except it wasn’t so flawless, not anymore.

The pair passed the burger joint and found a single tiny Psy-run food stand that mostly sold nutrient bars and other flavorless but efficient calorie options. They stopped here, less because Nikita preferred it and more because she was determined to prove to herself that she was the same she’d ever been. Staid, strong, Silent.

They sipped their nutrient-supplemented waters and unwrapped the bars on the walk back. _Is this impatience?_ she wondered. _Should we be able to wait until we’re sitting?_ Then she realized she was being sensitive, _worrying_ , which was worse. Why was her conditioning so determined to fail her today?

They passed the guitarist again, and this time he flagged them down at the end of the song. “You’re stuck here too?” he asked, respect in his tone. He was human, but clearly he knew to whom he spoke.

Nikita nodded.

Anthony went a step further. “I know very little about music, but you appear to be skilled.” From a Psy, that was a high compliment.

“Thanks.” The young man ran a hand through his hair and gave them a half grin. “I was supposed to be heading home after a gig… Guess that’s not happening tonight.”

He looked to be no older than Sascha, probably closer to twenty. “You should rent a hotel room.” The words came out of her mouth of their own accord, but she didn’t retract them.

Anthony’s gaze flicked to her. She ignored it. If he’d caught the flare of parental instincts, he ought to know not to acknowledge it. This flaw was one they shared. “Do you need help?” he asked the boy. “We can cover the cost if funds are the problem.”

 _We?_ The theoretical image of a Duncan-Kyriakus child flashed into Nikita’s mental eye again at the implication that the two of them had combined resources. It wasn’t that he was _wrong;_ their work was so closely linked that they might as well be combined. But they didn’t have the relationship that that simple word seemed to imply.

She was overanalyzing again.

She forced herself back into the conversation in time to hear Anthony say, “It’s not a problem, Jason. We’ll be in Terminal 23A when you need us.”

“Thank you very much, Councilors.” The boy, Jason, adjusted his guitar so that it sat ready in his hands. “Do Psy listen to Christmas music? I need to practice those, and you’re more than welcome to stay here and listen if you want.” His smile dimpled his baby-round cheeks. “Maybe you’ll pick up on places I need to improve.”

Anthony and Nikita shared a look, and automatically she reached out for telepathic contact. Still nothing. So instead she leaned in, her 5’8” frame tall enough to reach his ear. “Do you want to?” The question felt foreign, the close posture intimate. This would have been grounds for rehabilitation a few short years ago.

His breath warmed her neck. “I do.” She could hear the father in his voice, knew he saw the same thing in Jason that she did: a barely-adult child learning to be independent. Someone who wanted their approval, their presence. Sascha. Faith. Sahara.

She swallowed the thickness in her throat. “Okay.”

Anthony gave her a smile then, a real smile, that jolted her with the same electric heat as his touch. Her gaze locked on him in surprise. Had anyone ever looked at her like that?

They remained standing, and Jason began to strum a song she recognized. The lyrics seemed almost laughable: _have a holly jolly Christmas._ Psy weren’t jolly—were barely beginning to be _anything_ in terms of feelings—and what did holly have to do with the emotion?

Unexpectedly, Anthony’s left index finger tapped once on his thigh. Then again, and again. It took her a moment to realize he was finding the beat in the song. At first he was off, but the longer Jason played, his rhythm became true.

“You don’t have a musical history.” She said it as a challenge. Not play. An intellectual challenge.

He inclined his head. “I know the bare basics now, from Sahara’s visits. But rhythm isn’t difficult. It’s more math than art.”

This she didn’t believe. “I have high-level skills in algebra, geometry, and calculus and I’ve never been inclined to tap out a beat.”

“Maybe you should try it, then.” And—she hadn’t expected it—he moved his finger from his thigh to the back of her hand and kept up that same even tapping. Too many things going on. His touch distracted her from the music, which distracted her from the conversation, which distracted her from his mouth, which distracted her from his touch.

But she began to feel the conjunction between the heavy first strums and the sharpest taps. Desperate for something logical in all this, she worked through the timing, the ratios, and found it did make sense in the end. “I think I understand it.” This part, at least.

Static. Mental PsyNet static. She missed the one-on-one contact.

Of course that was when the song ended and Jason began another, this one slower and more intimate somehow. Anthony’s taps slowed with it, became gentle grazes. Nikita wondered at the biological reasons her skin felt so sensitive today. She brushed her hair behind one ear, wished the snow would disappear so they could get back to business, wished it would stay so she could enjoy this for a little while longer.

The elderly couple, still listening from a few yards away, shared a tender kiss that spoke of years together.

Anthony, Nikita realized anew, was standing close enough to kiss.

Not that she would. Not that she’d thought about it. Today or yesterday or most nights as she waited for sleep to relieve her… No, never.

His free hand brushed her sleek black fall of hair. Found the arch of her neck. A possessive, tender gesture that, in changeling circles at least, led up to one particular _other_ gesture of affection. She knew it. Despite herself, she wanted it.

“We should probably take our own advice and find a hotel for the night,” he said, lips against her ear again. Her heartbeat pulsed hard fast heavy in her throat, her chest, her abdomen, and she knew her Silence was hopelessly fragmented.

One final attempt: “The PsyNet is unlikely to remain under static all night. It would be more practical to wait until a calm allows us to contact our people. We have several ’porters available to us once that happens.”

His fingers traced her spine up to her nape, and she inhaled sharply, thinly. If this was new to him, maybe he really _had_ spontaneously generated a new skill. What would the PsyNet call an electric touch? Tk-El? “Or,” he suggested in a low voice that she definitely found appealing, “we could get a room while the PsyNet’s down. Practically speaking.”

The static. No one would ’path them, ’port them, find them. She swallowed, heat in her cheeks. “That… does sound like a logical course of action.”

With Jason’s guitar warming the air indoors, with snow dusting the windows and piling on the runways outdoors, with their mutual long-hidden love for their children despite a Psy society bent on eradicating those exact feelings… with affection more expansive than reason, Anthony kissed Nikita there in the airport terminal.

And Nikita kissed him back.


	21. Hawke/Sienna and Sascha/Lucas - Playlist

Sienna took a week off to visit DarkRiver, and though her absence was a painful pulse in Hawke’s chest, he soldiered through until she returned, at which point he claimed constant intimate skin privileges to reward himself for good behavior. His insistency sent even Riley and Indigo off with muttered excuses of “work to do” and “kids to train.”

Apparently, though, he ought to start letting her leave more often: she’d brought him a gift. Two hours after he’d taken the edge off, she riffled through her bag and then handed him an antique: an actual CD.

He gripped it carefully around the edges. “What is this?”

“It’s a CD. You know, stick it in a computer or a CD player, and sound comes out magically?”

Ha, ha, ha. His mate was _hilarious_. “I’m going to stick my foot up your butt. See how snarky you are then.”

“I’d probably still be able to piss you off,” she said cheerfully, and he had to agree. Her grin softened to a fond smile; she ran her fingers through his hair. “I made you a playlist of all the wolf-related songs I know.”

  1. His pleased wolf growled at the gesture, at the thoughtfulness behind the gift.  He tucked his hand around her nape and pulled her in for a long tasting kiss.



 

҉

 

A few days earlier, Lucas’s alpha feline smile had sent a rare shiver up Sienna’s spine—even as he laced his arms around Sascha, Sienna knew he was up to no good. The knowledge came from deep within her. She’d seen the same, if more wolfish, look on her own mate plenty of times.

But she had rarely been one to run from “up to no good,” so she asked, “Are you going to tell me what you’re planning, or are you going to make me sniff it out myself?” A very changeling turn of phrase, one that fell naturally from her lips.

Sascha grinned with unusual mischief and pressed her cheek against her mate’s. “We had an idea.”

“We?” Lucas laughed. Pride, playful mischievous pride, shone from him. “This one was all you, kitten.” He gave her a steamy look that clearly said _you will be rewarded later,_ and the empath’s grin widened even as she blushed.

“Sorry,” she said to Sienna, “Lucas is still working on _subtlety_ and knowing what’s appropriate for company.”

He bit her on the ear. “I _was_ being subtle. No gratitude.”

Honestly, though, this was tame interaction for mated pairs in a pack, and Sienna hadn’t thought anything of it except to miss the man on the other side of her own bond. “The plan?” she prompted again, not to be distracted.

Sascha absently stroked her mate’s head as he remained bent over her. “It’s about Hawke,” she revealed.

With an eye roll, Sienna deadpanned, “Isn’t everything?” The wolf alpha certainly seemed to think so at times. Luckily he had her to keep his ego and his autocratic commands in check. Which reminded her: “We need to schedule our next coffee-and-commiseration date.”

Sascha brightened. “Yes, definitely! The sooner the better.”

Lucas lifted his head to ask, “Coffee and commiseration?”

The girls shared a look and laughed.

Sascha explained, with teasing in her voice, “It’s when we go out and complain to each other about the trials of being mated to alphas. Sometimes we have all the ladies come and we complain about dominant men in general. Mercy in particular always has great stories to share.”

He growled low in his throat despite the understanding grin creasing his cheeks.

“Anyway,” she said, returning her attention to Sienna’s question, “Hawke has been so… _generous_ in his visits… and his gifts… and his affection…”

“‘Sascha darling,’” Lucas snarled, half to himself.

Sascha rolled her eyes and patted him soothingly.

The cardinal X-Psy raised both eyebrows. “So what are you planning to be _generous_ about in return?”

Both the alpha and his mate grinned.

Twin, intrinsically feline mischief.

 

҉

 

And now here Sienna was, a week later, passing Hawke a disc with _Hawke’s mix_ ♥ Sharpied on it in her own handwriting. Once he released her from his addicting kiss, he dug out an old CD player and played it, his wolf clearly perked up with interest.

The chorus of the first song made him grin: _Imma make a deal with the bad wolf so the bad wolf don’t bite no more._

She’d wandered over to put some clean laundry away, and he called her back to him. When she drew near, he tugged her close and closed his teeth gently over the pulse in her neck. At the small pleased noise she made, he rumbled, “The bad wolf only bites if you ask very, very nicely.”

She asked very, very nicely.

By the time he broke away for air, they were already on the next song.

 _There’s a she-wolf in the closet. Let it out so it can breathe._ Sienna leaned in close and breathed the _ha ha_ pant in sync, then danced out of the way when he all but shoved his hands up her shirt. “I need to put the laundry away!” she protested, laughing at the _pout_ on his face, but she didn’t give in. She continued to work through each new song, though sometimes she sang along.

_Werewolves of London…_

_The beast howls in my veins…_

_For my flesh had turned to fur…_

_For the werewolf, somebody like me…_

_I keep the wolf from the door, but he calls me up…_

And then, there in the middle of the mix, just when both man and wolf were feeling satisfied and stroked:

_Everybody wants to be a cat—_

Automatically he snarled, and he heard a telltale snort of a suppressed giggle.

 _“Sienna!”_ he bellowed as she collapsed against the dresser in uncontrollable laughter.


	22. Drew/Indigo - Mistletoe

An irrepressible grin splitting his face, Drew bounced from room to room with an armful of greenery, gleefully taping a sprig at every doorway, low-arched ceiling, dresser, sink, and cabinet he could find. Bathroom got one. Broom closet got one. Bedroom got about twenty.

Christmas truly was the most wonderful time of the year.

And he planned to make full use of decorating traditions.

Indigo was out for the weekend, though—some training thing in San Diego—and didn’t return until three a.m. Monday morning, when she came in without turning on the lights and collapsed into bed beside him. He found her half-comatose and fully clothed when he woke at seven; the light kiss he brushed over her temple didn’t even make her stir. Affection warmed in his gut: that deep of a sleep was a reminder of the boundless trust inherent in their mating bond. His lieutenant didn’t pass out next to just anyone.

He left for work and came back just as Indy was returning from a hard workout in the gym, judging by the sweat darkening her shirt and gleaming on her skin. He wasn’t exactly spic-and-span himself right then, so he had no qualms about bodily blocking her path through the door.

She tugged at his hair. “Move. I need to shower.”

Instead of agreeing like the _incredibly charming_ young man that he was, he shrugged innocently. “Sorry,” he said, “I don’t make the rules.” And then he pointed upward.

Mistletoe dangled over their heads.

Indigo huffed out a breath, but a smile tilted her lips up. “Yeah, okay.” Fingers glancing at his stubble-rough jaw, she tugged him in for a quick slant of a kiss and then pushed him the rest of the way through. He was off-center enough from the intimate skin privileges and her easy acquiescence that he actually stumbled.

She kicked the door closed behind them and immediately pulled off her shirt and tossed it in the hamper on the other side of the room. Her shorts were halfway to the same fate when large male hands spanned her waist with smug luxury.

“You just have the worst luck,” her mate pretended to sympathize.

She glanced up. Another cluster of white berries on spiky green leaves. Her namesake eyes slitted at him in play. “You did this.” It wasn’t a question.

Drew grinned. “Little old me?” He leaned over her shoulder to kiss her full on the mouth again, and this time it was no brief brush. He nipped at her lower lip and ran his hands through her ponytail, pulling out the elastic with experienced fingers.

She pulled away long enough to protest, “My hair is dirty.”

“Does it look like I care.” He’d seen his mate in everything from black tie gown to post-marathon sweats to nothin’ at all. If any of it had changed his love for her, he’d paint himself tawny and call himself a leopard. To prove his point, he raked his fingers through the black mess and kissed her again.

Eventually she did insist on showering, and he let her go. He even refrained from pointing out the mistletoe she passed on her way into the bathroom. But once she was fresh and clean and pleased, he took great joy in “happening” to meet her by the wardrobe (kiss!) and by the kitchen sink _(long_ kiss!)… and by the pantry, but at that point she’d learned to look up anytime she moved.

He appeared at her side, handsy as ever, and she froze with her hand in the box of dried fruits. Her eyes narrowed, and slowly she tilted her head back to look at the ceiling.

“There was not mistletoe there when I walked over here,” Indigo snarled with no real venom.

Drew held up his hands. “Must’ve been. It’s right there.”

Exasperated, she took a last handful of snacks. “This is the fifth time in half an hour. Where did you even _get_ all that crap?”

“A good magician never reveals his secrets.”

She sighed, but it became disbelieving laughter, and she leaned in.


	23. Mercy/Riley - University AU

An all-too-familiar red ponytail stood out from the crowd of grad students making their way to their seats in the lecture hall, and Riley intentionally kept track of it so he could plant himself as far away as possible. Mercy Smith made it almost impossible for him to focus on academics.

She sat down in the front right, beside a blond guy she immediately jumped into banter with. The open grins, the open skin-to-skin contact—Riley dug his nails into his palms in an effort to contain the burst of jealousy. _You’re being ridiculous,_ he told himself, throwing his giant body into a seat in the back left. He knew the guy, Dorian, had a mate (and actually she was coming down the aisle now, her hair tamed into a braid today), knew he and Mercy were best friends and _only_ friends, knew he himself had no claim on Mercy to warrant such possessiveness. But there it was anyway, every day, predictable as clockwork.

Hence, the trouble with concentrating.

He was working on it, though. The distance helped a fraction, and when he managed to avoid interacting with her, that helped too. Until he spent too long missing the fire of their banter, and then like an addict who’d reached the end of his rope, he found himself searching her out, throwing himself at the most vivid creature ever to grace God’s green earth.

As if things couldn’t possibly get any worse, his best friend and RD, Hawke Snow, was jumpy and homicidal over Sienna Lauren, the young RD for the attached girls’ dorm, and Hawke’s frustrated need for skin privileges was rubbing off on Riley in all the wrong ways. Both men were becoming well acquainted with the workout room in the 24-hour campus athletic center.

The study group pack met every other night, though, and Riley couldn’t skip those if he wanted to keep up his GPA. So he held his breath and kept his face buried in his book and whenever Mercy happened to initiate contact, he pulled out his best I’m A Responsible Stone Wall face. Which wasn’t hard; it was his go-to persona.

If only the redheaded hellion couldn’t smash it with a single bloody look.

“Are you planning to actually contribute anything,” she asked sweetly, “or are you just going to mooch off our notes all night?”

He almost snarled, fingers digging into his thighs in an attempt not to rise to the bait. It failed. “I’m not mooching. But given that I’m usually the one providing the notes for you to mooch off, I think I’d be allowed one night’s break.”

Rather than settle down, she seemed to perk up at his refusal to roll over. “I don’t use your notes. I have enough trouble trying not to fall asleep without adding your thought patterns to the mix. Talk about a snooze fest.” She pretended to yawn.

He wanted to tear into her until she acknowledged his dominance, to find and push whatever button would make her see him as an equal or more. To have the right to touch her as he wanted. His frustration made his words sharp. “Yes, you’d probably have trouble deciphering it all, with how much you talk in class. Makes sense that the effort would exhaust you.”

Her eyes flashed, and not in play.

 _I may have misstepped,_ he realized too late.

“Riley Aedan Kincaid,” she warned, voice low and dangerous, “if you insult my intelligence again, I promise you will lose whatever extremity you like the most.” Her gaze dipped meaningfully.

Unexpectedly, though, instead of a cringe in instinctive protection, heat flared in his lower body at what could not possibly have been meant as a visual caress. He shifted his position and sent up a quick prayer of thanks that the others in the study group had stepped out for a ten-minute break. Now he was just wishing he’d stepped out as well—but he couldn’t escape now without it looking like he was tucking his tail between his legs.

Hoping to distract himself, he countered, “I don’t doubt your intelligence. It’s your inability to make and stick to a plan that worries me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh yes, let’s make a plaaaaan.” She dragged the word out into five or six syllables. “Everything doesn’t have to follow a color-coded flowchart, Mr. Muddie.”

As in short for Stick in the Mud. He scowled. For reasons he couldn’t fathom, her disdain for his methods and his Responsible Big Brother personality cut deeper than it should have. God help him, he liked sparring with her, but he hated the reminder that she wasn’t spurred on by the same soul-deep tug that he was.

Yet when his little sister Brenna popped her head in to ask what they wanted on the pizzas, both Mercy and Riley jerked backward. It took him a second to register the obvious meaning of the mirrored movement—and then it surprised him, soothed him, warmed him.

He had known he was leaning in toward her. He did it at all times on impulse, a magnetism that he allowed himself. But… if she was leaning in too?

 

҉

 

At the appearance of the youngest Kincaid, Mercy had to pull herself together. This was ridiculous. The man was in her head. She was on the verge of jumping the idiot, study group or no study group, for heaven’s sake; since when did she find this kind of guy attractive?

 _Since this semester, I guess,_ she thought with a grumble.

Because there was no denying that she definitely found Riley attractive. The strong, steady Assistant RD was pure muscle and masculinity, and though they clashed bright and brilliant, she wanted nothing more than skin-to-skin contact.

He wasn’t opposed to the idea. Oh, she’d figured that out quite quickly, with the sinful looks that flashed through his eyes when he thought no one was looking. (He teased her for being unfocused, but how was she supposed to focus with him looking like that? _Honestly_.)

But it went against every principle in her book. Mostly the “don’t go out with guys who want a housewife” principle, but also the “don’t go out with Hawke’s friends” principle, the “don’t go out with study buddies” principle, and the “don’t go out with Riley Kincaid because he’s _the absolute worst”_ principle.

This last one was mostly just to make herself feel better about not going out with him.

So she couldn’t go out with him. Unfortunately for her sanity, she couldn’t seem to just leave him alone either. She played with him like a cat, alternately fixated and dismissive, and she might have felt bad about it had he not seemed to get off on it. In fact, though he didn’t play such games himself, he could give as good as he got when it was just the two of them going at it. Why didn’t that side of him come out in public?

They were playing an intense game of rock-paper-scissors for the last slice of pizza when her determination broke. His hair shone bronze in the lamplight of her room and it was one in the morning and her entire body seemed to gravitate toward his, and best two out of three had somehow turned into a game of insults that doubled as innuendo.

“You are going to be up close and personal with the dirt. I might even rub your face in it.” Two rocks.

She flicked her hair over her shoulder, the picture of serenity. “It’s cute how you think you could pin me. At all. Ever.” Two papers.

He grinned, a dangerous show of teeth and that sinful look in his eyes again. “Oh, I’m sure it’d be a wild ride, but we both know who the dominant one is here.” Two rocks again.

“You enjoy a little humiliation?” she asked, pretending to be shocked. Pretending not to notice that mere inches separated them. “Hmm, wouldn’t have called it, but good to know.” Two scissors.

He gave that little growl then, the one that she felt in all the right places.

And she decided she had a better idea for how to spend the others’ coffee run than rock-paper-scissors.

Pushing up onto her knees, she planted one hand on either side of him and looked into his dumb chocolate eyes with nothing short of a challenge. His body heat, his pulse, his gravitational pull seemed oppressive up close… and curse it all, she liked it.

“You should yield,” she suggested, the words a breath, a caress of air on his jaw. His pupils dilated to swallow the brown in black, and she smirked. _Sucker._

But he didn’t back down. “Ladies first.”

“Mm.” She was so close to him, so close it _hurt_ , but she refused to give in first. “I promise I won’t tell.”

“It’d be a dull story, since it would never happen.” However, his unwavering stare at her mouth suggested otherwise.

Encouraged, she licked her lower lip.

His breath stuttered audibly.

“Aww,” she cooed, though her heart slammed hard and fast in her chest, “somebody’s looking a little—”

And then rough male hands cupped each side of her face and pulled her in that last meager inch. Her lips pressed hard against his, a hot chapped scrape of skin that made her body sing. Oh, yes. Oh, _yes._ In a rare moment of imbalance, she toppled from her precarious position; on her instinctive reach to catch herself, one of her hands landed on his rock-hard thigh, and she made an embarrassing _noise_ in her _throat_.

Ever arrogant, he chuckled into the kiss.

She shoved at his chest (his glorious, solid, muscular chest) before licking into his mouth with enthusiasm. Maybe he had a little room to be arrogant—not that she’d tell him that to his face. Ever.

Seconds, minutes, maybe hours later, he broke away panting to say, “The others—”

“Can stay out in the hall… for five minutes,” she finished, her own breath short and choppy, and then she pulled him back to her, to scrape her nails through his hair, to luxuriate in his perfect mouth. His fingers slid under the hem of her T-shirt, smoothed along the curves of her waist and hips.

It was definitely longer than five minutes before she dragged herself away from him and twisted the doorknob to unlock it. Scraping her kiss-mussed hair back into a low ponytail, she scooted back up onto the bed and pretended not to notice the looks Hawke and Indigo and Lucas and Sascha were giving the two of them.

She had to work extra hard to ignore the look _Riley_ was giving her.

 

҉

 

The next day, Riley eyed Mercy from across the lecture hall and couldn’t decide whether or not he was surprised that she hadn’t so much as looked his way since she walked in. Not that it mattered. After last night, he was done letting her get away with that. Instead of situating himself strategically far away, he planted himself in the seat right next to hers, not looking at her either but unloading his book and notes with a finality that shouted his refusal to move.

Instead of fighting his new seating choice, though, Mercy continued to talk to Dorian and Ashaya—while leaning just enough to brush limbs with Riley. The flame of sensual memory electrified him, making him equal parts satisfied with his choice and concerned that his concentration was now and forever shot to hell.

This prediction turned out to be accurate. He had to pull out every poker face and concentration trick in his book, plus try a few new ones, and he barely managed to survive until the words “see you on Thursday.”

“Lunch?” Mercy asked him casually, as if she hadn’t spent the last hour and a half pushing his buttons with the world’s smallest, most attractive smirk on her face.

He let his hand skim over her back, testing the waters. She didn’t lean into the contact, but she didn’t push him off either, so he declared it a success. “Sure. Cafeteria, or do you want to go get something?”

She glanced skeptically toward the student center. “What are they feeding us today?”

“Fake enchiladas, according to Drew.”

“Ooh.” She winced theatrically, bringing an actual smile to his face. “Grey would string me up if I put that crap in my mouth. Let’s go get something.”

“I’ll drive,” they said at the same time.

She laughed. “Yeah, no. Seriously. I’m driving. Let’s go.”

He gritted his teeth in preparation for her hell-on-wheels technique but capitulated and followed her out into the parking lot. And since he was being _so_ good, he felt he had well earned a little bit of time to show off how well he knew her. “Grey still liking cooking school?”

As he’d banked on, her head cocked toward him, eyes lit up from within. “Yeah, he is. Top of his class, which I called from day one.” Her posture was already excellent, but she straightened even further with pride at the thought of her sibling. He expected her to talk more about the redheaded hellions she called her brothers, and he would have been perfectly happy to listen, but she surprised him by turning the question back on him: “How does Brenna like her FAST project? I don’t get to talk to her much—she’s always working.”

Riley hadn’t known Mercy knew about his baby sister’s pet project; the two girls got along fine but rarely hung out simply because their schedules never intersected. “She and Judd wish it didn’t keep her quite so busy—” A reference to the man who dared put his mouth on Riley’s baby sister’s on a regular basis. “—but she’s dedicated.” His chest warmed with affection and pride. “I can’t believe she’s about to graduate. She’s already done so much.”

“And the youngest Level One in, like, ever,” Mercy added, half to herself.

“Exactly.”

She eyed him, brushed her hand over his arm in a teasingly brief caress that put every one of his nerves on high alert. “This is me,” she said with a nod at the red pickup coming up on his left.

He knew her car. He skimmed the lot for it every morning on instinct, just out of a desire to know if she was around. He decided it would be prudent not to point this out, so he only nodded and let himself in the passenger side. The truck rocked with his weight.

Naturally, Mercy noticed. “Geez, lay off the brownies,” she teased, sliding in with such well-placed grace that the truck barely registered her presence.

He rolled his eyes, but he appreciated her feminine athleticism. She was lithe and elegant where he was blocky and solid, flattered by the gentle-firm curves of muscle that defined the edges of her frame. A leopard to his wolf, dangerous but beautiful.

Lord, she was beautiful.

He was beginning to wonder if any other woman would ever catch his eye again.

“Hey, I’m talking to you.”

He jumped a little and found her watching him with amusement glittering in her eyes.

“If I catch you eyeing my boobs again, I’m going to throw you out the window,” she play-threatened.

“I’d like to see you try.” His voice had gone low, heated with teasing and attraction, and in that moment they were both hyperaware of the confined space into which they’d condensed two dominant personalities and the sultry memories of the previous night’s petting kisses.

Hands. Mouths. Scratch marks in his shoulders.

He stared at her, pulse erratic in his throat, and she stared right back at him.

“Lunch first,” she forced out, but the words sounded thick and stilted, and he remembered how smooth and warm her hands had been on his rougher skin…

He was already unbuckling his seat belt. “Lunch can wait,” he decided, and when he curved one hand around the nape of her neck, she came to his kiss willingly, eagerly, playfully.

 _This is good,_ he thought with the last of his fragmented rational thought. _I could get used to this._

The problem was that he was pretty sure he _was_ already used to it. He liked every part of her—her intelligence, her sense of humor, her ability to strategize, even the fact that her vivacious teasing made him act like a freaking juvenile. He wanted to keep her. How would he handle it if she continued to brush him off and meant it? If she decided she was only looking for a part-time man?

Then she made that sound that he liked, and he stopped overthinking whatever it was that they had together. To be fair, he stopped thinking at all.

 

҉

 

His phone buzzed the next evening. A group text from Hawke, short and to the point: _No study group tonight._

Soon after, one from Indigo, just to Riley: _Ha. He’s going out with Sienna._

Despite himself, Riley grinned. The pair of RDs had been driving each other—and everyone who had to deal with them—up the wall long enough; some actual dating action would help let out some of the pent-up tension. _Are we meeting anyway?_

 _I’m not._ Then, a second later: _Maybe YOU should go, though. For some one-on-one “tutoring.”_ Heavy suggestive sarcasm in the quotation marks. She’d thrown him some knowing looks last night after coming in on the end of his spit-swapping session.

He left this counsel unanswered. Mostly because he’d been considering that idea himself, and didn’t want to admit it. He had no problem inviting himself into Mercy’s life, but he knew his feline female, and the second he made his intentions clear, she’d disappear, just to be stubborn. But if he didn’t make a move at all, then she’d think either A) he wasn’t interested, or B) he wasn’t dominant enough to handle her, both of which were lightyears away from the truth.

So he picked up his phone and tapped in a name that he knew might change everything.

The line rang once, twice, and he almost hung up. Texting would be easier anyway. But then:

“Hey, what’s up?” came her voice, familiar despite the distortion of technology.

His throat wanted to close up. This was all new; she confused him.

“Riley?” she asked.

“Hey,” he said, too late and embarrassed. “Did you get the message about study group?”

She snorted. “Yeah, Luc told me. About time.”

“You have plans?” The question came out painfully over-casual, and he could have kicked himself.

At least she didn’t tease him for it. “Not tonight. You?”

“Nothing.”

 They were silent for a beat too long, both knowing exactly where this line of discussion was leading but unwilling to be the first to crack.

He had just opened his mouth for some roundabout way of asking when he heard six glorious words come out of her glorious mouth.

“Okay, okay, you can come over.” She sighed this with the melodrama of the truly put-upon. And then, in a distinctly more suggestive tone: “…As long as you promise to behave.”

He planned to promise no such thing. “I assure you,” he said, in a responsible tone she would see right through, “I will not try anything you aren’t completely on board with.”

A moment of silence. He could practically hear Mercy grinning. “In that case, you better haul ass.”

Riley had never taken the stairs so quickly.


	24. Dorian/Ashaya - Lab Partners AU

Last semester’s lab partner assignment had, for lack of a better word, sucked. Ashaya still dug her nails into her palms when she thought about the missed labs, the half-completed reports, the unreturned texts. The class had been critical to her master’s degree, and the only reason she’d managed to pull a decent grade was that she’d done an amazing solo project on DNA. So this year, she mentally prepared for the worst. Hope was for undergrads. If she got lucky, whoever she was paired with would at least _warn_ her before skipping out on their commitments.

For the first day she dressed in her business best, with the thought that maybe she could scare her future partner into responsibility. Jewel tones, sharp creases, sharp heels. _Fear me._ This wasn’t her usual MO, but she wasn’t pulling any punches this semester. If you looked like you had no emotions, she’d discovered, people tended to respect you.

As she made Keenan breakfast, she opened her email to find an update from the prof, who’d supplied the list of lab partners ahead of time. This could be very convenient… or very depressing. But she opened the document, because she’d rather be prepared either way.

_Ashaya Aleine and Dorian Christenson._

Dorian? She didn’t recognize the name, but that didn’t mean she was going to leave this to chance. She pulled up a new email and was in the middle of typing his name in the Recipients box when— _ping_.

A new email from D. Christenson. Subject: _Lab Partners._

“D’you get a text?” Keenan asked through a mouthful of cereal.

“Email,” she said, tapping the screen to open it.

_Ashaya,_

_I’m Dorian, your assigned lab partner for Organic Chem. If you have time, I’d like to meet before the first lab to discuss how we’re going to handle everything._

If Ashaya had been an emotional person, her jaw might have dropped. _I might actually have a competent lab partner?_ This hope had stabbed her in the back in the past, but this was a good sign. A great sign. She read the rest of the email—professional but with a hint of feline charm—and sent him a formal reply suggesting they meet at three that afternoon in front of the student center.

He accepted, so at 2:50 she took her books and the syllabus and Keenan and perched on a bench, posture flawless. No reason to make a bad first impression. She looked around for anyone who looked like they had a purpose for being here, and then— _oh._

A man who looked like a surfer strode toward the doors, head high as he looked around. Sweeping blond hair, clear blue eyes, very much a _pretty boy_ … her first instinct was to doubt his abilities, but something in the set of his jaw told her not to dismiss him so quickly.

“Dorian?” she called, raising one hand, and he pivoted toward her voice.

“Ashaya?” When she nodded, her closed the distance between them and held out his hand. She looked at it for a moment, uncomfortable with touch, but then accepted the handshake. This time.

“Good to meet you.” The quick once-over and accompanying smile he gave her confirmed his words.

She blinked a little. Was this flirting? It wasn’t very comfortable; why did other people enjoy it?

He sat down beside her on the bench (without touching her, thankfully), and they laid out the standard for their lab partnership. Relief saturated her outlook for the semester: half the things she wanted him to commit to, he asked _her_ to commit to first. _He may look like a surfer,_ it didn’t take her long to realize, _but he’s a science nerd._ He made offhand comments that inadvertently revealed the extent of his knowledge, his experience, and she glowed at the idea of working with a mind that could keep up with hers.

This was a partnership she could get used to.

And the symmetry of his face didn’t hurt either.

 

҉

 

“That went really well, I think.” Ashaya’s breath was coming a little fast, though if anyone asked, it wasn’t from emotion. A kinked strand of hair had come undone from her fastidious braid, so she brushed it back and tucked it into place.

Dorian, too, looked flushed from the excitement of the experiment. “I think if we repeat it, we’ll have the same results.” His gaze lingered on her face, on her hands as she straightened her shirt. “Want to try changing Independent Variable 2 now?”

She wanted to believe the stutter in her chest was only for science. “Let’s do it.” She rarely let him drive their work, despite his definite bossy tendencies, but in this case she’d been planning on suggesting the same thing. And it was going so well that she was in a lenient mood.

He reached around her for his notebook, and when his arm brushed her side, the strong muscle burned her through both their layers of clothing. _Isn’t he standing a little close?_ Yet she didn’t pull back. It had been three weeks now, three weeks of timely responses and met deadlines and aced lab reports, and she definitely considered him one of her few friends. Even Keenan had grown attached to him during shared meals and early visits to nail down the data—her son regularly asked when Dorian was coming to see him again.

It was this thought that, at the end of their work session, led her to ask, “Do you want to come over for dinner? I need to pick up Keenan first, but the lasagna I stuck in the oven should be done by then.”

Blue eyes watched her too perceptively. “Dinner?”

That electric curl popped back out of place. She reached up to fix it, but he got there first. He twined it around his finger. The slow, sensuous motion was… charming. Her entire body seemed to be on high alert, sensitive to each light tug on her scalp and waiting for whatever he might do next. In an effort to collect herself, she said, “Yes, dinner. I may watch a movie with Keenan but you aren’t obligated to stay for that.”

“Oh, no,” he contradicted her with a final tug. His hand dropped, but not before grazing her cheekbone. The heat that seared into her at the contact was utterly illogical, but she couldn’t turn it off. “I am definitely obligated to stay for that. The little man would tan my hide if I didn’t.” His smile was reflected in his eyes.

And Ashaya considered another experiment she’d like to try with her lab partner. In the name of science.

She’d even document her observations to make it official.

“You should kiss me,” she suggested, in as professional a voice as she might have used to recommend a different crucible over the Bunsen burner.

He stiffened, and for a terrible moment she was _afraid_. Had she misread him? Had this all been a joke that her overly literal mind misprocessed? Her stomach plummeted—but then he bent his head to press his hot lips hard to hers, and the stunning electric contact threatened to short-circuit her brain. His hands caressed her waist, and she pushed up into the kiss without meaning to. He pulled out the elastic band holding her hair in its regimented braid, and when the curls exploded into life, he petted and combed and played with the wild, textured halo. She wove her fingers through his own silky blond hair, traced the angled edges of his face, felt him all but purr.

“Science is amazing,” she managed when she’d finally caught her breath.

He grinned. “It’s probably my favorite thing in the world. But I think we need more data before we can say for certain.”

She laughed, and he pulled her back to him.

For science.


	25. Drew/Indigo - Present Shopping

Indigo leaned against the wall, brow furrowed and arms crossed. “I’m just not good at picking out gifts.”

“Gonna have to get over that pretty quick,” said Mercy pitilessly.

“Can I give him food? Or gift certificates for food?”

The cat threw a pillow at her. _“No.”_

“We need a new vacuum.”

“Don’t even think about it.”

The lieutenant knocked her head against the wall a few times in hopes of jarring a few brain cells into action. Nothing edible. Nothing utilitarian. What else _was_ there? “What are you getting Riley?” She was desperate. She knew full well that Riley and Drew were different people, different personalities, but she needed ideas. Something. _Anything._ Her mate had _cute and charming_ down pat; if only those were contagious through the mating bond.

Mercy grinned a very feline grin. “I bought a Stetson.” She didn’t specify which one of them would be wearing it because she hadn’t yet decided. Maybe they’d take turns.

But a cowboy hat wouldn’t cut it for Indigo, and they both knew it. Maybe she could just show up nude on Christmas morning, call it a gift. He’d certainly be happy to accept. It felt unoriginal, though—they’d played that particular game before. She wanted to come up with something new, fresh, _fun_. Unfortunately, she’d rarely unleashed this side of herself before her mate forced her out of her business-formal shell. Now she wanted to match, even surpass, his creative enthusiasm, and she found herself lacking.

Indigo Riviere did not like to find herself lacking.

So she began to compile a list of things she liked, and a list of things Drew liked. A list of things they wanted to try out, sexually and otherwise. A list of things they’d already tried and would go to any lengths to avoid. Indigo scrawled a number of lists on a number of Post-It notes. Patterns, themes, highlights emerged; a plan began to form in her head.

A week after the attack of the mistletoe, Indigo taped a one-line note to the door and made herself scarce… to go plant another note and a small box in his gym locker. And then a third note and a larger box in her office.

This was a game, a chase. On a few different Saturdays they’d done scavenger hunts, geocaching, that sort of thing, and it had been unbelievably fun for both of them. This, she figured, was a natural extension of that. But with gifts and compliments written in ink. On one note she even doodled two happy little stick figures, labeled “Drew” and “Indigo” given her lack of talent (though the ponytail on one made the difference clear).

She half wondered if he’d anticipate her final move and beat her there, but she showed up and the place was empty. Good. It gave her a chance to catch her breath—and change her clothes.

She was wriggling into the ridiculous outfit when she scented him on the wind. He wasn’t making any secret of his presence, was probably barreling through the woods at breakneck speed to catch up with her. His enthusiasm pleased both woman and wolf, but she had to hurry to beat him.

But she flounced into position just in time.

“Indy!” Drew flew into the clearing where they’d once made camp with a group of juveniles, and he skidded at the sight awaiting him: his illustrious lieutenant sitting primly on a tree stump, in what had to be an old Halloween costume.

George Washington.

Indigo was dressed as _George Washington_.

He tried to hold in his laughter, really he did, but then he snorted and it was all over. His eyes watered with the force of it; his abdomen and jaw ached. “Indy, what—?”

Pink dusted her cheekbones; a self-deprecating grin appeared and soon became laughter. “Surprise.”

“That is not Christmas-y,” he protested, rubbing his jaw to ease the happy hurt.

“I got all the Christmas-y I could manage with your event last week,” she pointed out, referring to his extensive decorating with mistletoe. “Now come over here.”

“Is this the start of a roleplay? Because, sadly, I left my Martha Washington costume in the den.”

She threw up her hands in feigned frustration. “Come on, Drew, get your act together! What are we supposed to do now?”

A seductive sing-song voice: _“Weeelll…”_   He looked her over. And snorted again. “I’m sorry, I can’t seduce a Founding Father.”

Indigo’s laughter displaced her wig, and she had to straighten it. “If you come help me out of this,” she suggested, “you might have a change of heart.”

Lake-blue became amber in a single blink. When he grinned, the wolf prowled at the forefront. “I can never deny a lady in need my chivalrous assistance.”

She flashed her own teeth. “Happy Christmas to me, then.”

“Guess you’re currently a president in need, which makes it extra imperative.”

“You’re such a moron. Hurry up.”

He did, and as promised, wolf eyes lit up at the distinctly un-presidential attire hidden under the outer layer. He dropped the wig on the ground, smoothed her hair away from her neck, and attached his mouth to her pulse.

Her eyes fluttered. “This isn’t your present.”

Breath across wet skin. “Sure feels like it.”

“No—” Suddenly she was embarrassed, and not because of the ridiculous costume intended to make him laugh. “Did you read what I wrote you?”

He paused in his ministrations. “I did.”

Her toes curled, more in worry than anticipation. Had he liked the gesture? Or was it too stilted?

“It was sweet.” He kissed her softly. “Cute, even.” And again. “How the turns have tabled.”

“You liked it?”

“Indy, if I had purred any more, I would’ve been a cat.”

A sigh of a smile.

“I’m definitely going to have a big head, though. I saved all the notes. I can now pull them out at a moment’s notice and read them back to you should you ever complain about me.”

“When have I complained about you?”

“After the mistletoe thing, for one.”

“You insisted on kissing me all night long. I was _sore_. That’s a special circumstance.”

He pretended to bite over the pulse in her neck. She batted him away, then pulled him back for a kiss.

A few minutes later, his voice came out distinctly lower and shorter of breath when he said, “And here I just got you a vacuum.”

 


	26. Mercy/Riley - Soulmate Marks AU

“Oh, _hell_ no.” The words were out of Mercy’s mouth before she knew what had happened.

She’d interrupted an otherwise quiet work meeting at CTX, a big name in communications. Twenty coworkers turned to look at her. One of them, a guy built like a friggin’ wall and with chocolate eyes that went straight to her nerves and also the most _serious_ , most _irritating_ guy she’d _ever met_ , gave her a look and pulled his T-shirt down over where it had ridden up his lower back.

And revealed the worst thing she’d seen in her entire life: an iridescent tattoo of a wolf and leopard playing. Lines in obsidian that made her want to run and never come back.

Because she had the exact same tattoo in the exact same place. A permanent mark she’d been born with. Her soulmate mark.

And if Riley “Stick in the Mud” Kincaid was supposed to be her soulmate, she was going to have _strong_ words with the scientists who engineered the genetically generated marks unique to each pair.

“Carry on,” she said, waving a hand, fury vibrating in her every cell despite her blasé tone and expression.

Afterward, Riley pulled her aside, looking so calm that it shattered what little chill she’d managed. “Is there a problem?” he asked, voice low. His hand still held her elbow.

She jerked away, almost hissing. “You don’t have skin privileges.” Normally she had more control over herself than this: it just went to show how badly that plot twist had affected her. She had no plans to let any man tie her down to domestic life, much less someone she didn’t like. Even if he was luscious to look at. _That’s irrelevant to the issue at hand_ , she reminded herself. _You can make out with a stone wall, once at an office party when you had too much to drink. But you can’t spend your entire life chained to it._

He watched her with intensely focused eyes, and then he stiffened. His gaze dipped to the small of her back. “Do you—?”

“No,” she snarled, too quickly.

And that quickly, he knew. She could see the shift in his eyes, in his posture. “This isn’t a game,” he warned her.

She bared her teeth—it wasn’t a smile. “I know. That’s why you need to stay well away from me.”

A smirk in his eyes that no one else ever saw. He delighted in antagonizing her and her alone. “You chicken?”

Her jaw dropped. “I’ll ignore that. _This_ time.”

But he shifted closer, never quite touching, but close enough that the space between them shivered with electricity. Not that she’d ever admit to anything electric between them, but there it was. The magnetism tugged her toward him no matter how hard she resisted. And as she recalled, the last time she stopped resisting, it had been bucketloads of fun for both of them. _I am definitely not thinking about this_ , she told herself, definitely thinking about it. “You tread a fine line,” she said instead, but she didn’t step back. That wasn’t how the game worked.

His solid form generated more heat than was fair. And she did _so_ like to be warm, spoiled as she was by the trips to visit her grandmother Isabella in Brazil. “I only toe the lines that shouldn’t be there to begin with,” he pointed out, and then he was gone.

At lunch he sat beside her without asking, interrupting her conversation with Indigo, one of the few females in the building dominant enough to keep up with her. “Go away,” Mercy told him without looking over.

In response, he stole a fry off her plate.

That made her look. She jerked her food out of his reach, eyes narrowing. “Don’t touch me. Don’t touch my lunch.”

“Even kindergartners know how to share.”

“Well, I don’t feel like sharing with you.”

Holding her gaze, he reached for another.

She slapped his tan hand. _“Back off.”_

Indigo’s hand covered her mouth, but her eyes creased and shoulders shook.

Riley retracted his arm, but his stupid dark eyes said the war was not over. Well, good. She’d take great joy in kicking him out the door. No way was he her soulmate—even if fighting with him was the best part of her workday.

 

҉

 

Of course, _now_ Lucas decided she and Riley _neeeeeeded_ to liaison on the next big project. “You’re our best,” her boss said, as if that excused his absurd decision to stick them together for two hours. In a car. Alone.

Mercy was going to _die_.

Thankfully she’d managed to claim driving privileges, so it was she who pulled up in front of the offices in her beautifully jacked-up truck, and it was he who walked out with a look of minor terror crossing his face.

“I’m driving,” he said, stopping outside the passenger door. “Park and I’ll get my car.”

“The only thing you’re driving is me out of my mind.” She reached over and smacked the interior. “Get in.”

He grumbled so low and long that it was almost a growl.

“You’re welcome to put in a complaint to Hawke and Lucas,” she offered in her most sugary voice, with a smile to match.

Riley wasn’t smiling. “They’re less likely to kill me than your inability to follow speed limits.”

Her grin widened. “Those are more like suggestions. Guidelines.” She said this solely because she knew it irritated him.

But his boss had told him to go, so he went, though his knuckles clenched white on his thighs. Mercy swept her high ponytail over her shoulder, tilted her head left right left in a smug feline gesture, and pulled out of the parking lot.

“This car is unprofessional,” Riley gritted out.

She turned onto the highway, immediately swerved around a sedan going the legal speed. “ _You’re_ unprofessional.”

“That comeback was unprofessional.”

A snort. “Yeah, it was. I’ll come up with something better.” Her gaze flicked to him. “After all, I have two hours with nothing better to do.”

He groaned again and pressed the back of his head against the seat.

She was _not thinking_ about pressing him against the seat! She averted her eyes to stare down the road and got back to what she was good at: getting the Wall to crack and engage with her.

They passed half an hour bickering and pushing each other’s buttons every way they could. Riley felt himself unfurling with the refreshing exercise of tangling with the one person who ever talked to him like this. As much as he liked to rile this woman, he suspected there was more behind their interaction than mere rivalry.

And that was why he was determined to get a look at her lower back.

She’d said she didn’t have the mark, and she wasn’t a liar, but in this particular case, he didn’t believe her. He would bet an entire pecan pie that a wolf and a cat gleamed black between the curves of spine and hip… and if he got lucky, maybe he’d have the chance to pet the tattoo a little. He’d been drowning for her since she first pounced on him two months ago at that party, and this new piece of information meant maybe it wasn’t just pining, maybe it wasn’t just _him_.

If she thought he was doggedly determined _now_ , she hadn’t seen nothin’ yet.

 

҉

 

Mercy and Riley strode into the glass office building in perfect synchronicity, his extra height balanced by her long legs and quick grace. He was proud to have her at his side, wanted to keep her there.

They stopped at the receptionist’s desk and were immediately ushered to a waiting lounge several floors up. Good. CTX was a big name, dangerous to underestimate. Some fifteen years ago they’d been betrayed; payback had been feral. Now they were untouchable.

“Let’s get second lunch after this,” Mercy decided, and it wasn’t a question.

“We just ate three hours ago.” Granted, he _was_ hungry, but he liked to argue with her on principle.

Her eyes slitted at him. “Yeah, but I want _empanadas_.”

Oh, yes please. He could eat twenty without coming up for air, and still have room for _arepas_ afterward. But that wasn’t how the game went. His most Reasonable tone: “It’s out of our way.”

She huffed. “It’s not like I’m asking you to pay for me. In and out. Five minutes. I’m more pleasant to be around when I’m not hungry.”

“You, pleasant? I’d have to see that to believe it.”

Then she was _there_ , right up against him, her head cocked in challenge. He was suddenly painfully aware that they were the only two in the room. “I can be _very_ pleasant,” she purred, “when I have the proper motivation.”

Words escaped solid, staid Riley Kincaid.

Mercy knew this was a dangerous move—they were at work, first of all, and she’d seen the possessive flare in the man’s eyes when he realized she’d reacted to his mark. Not to mention, the more she tried to avoid thinking about being with him, the more she wanted to try it on for size, so if she started something, she might not be able to end it. Whatever was pulling her to play, to allow and _relish_ skin privileges, wasn’t fully logical.

She felt his fingers wind in her ponytail, a light tug in her hair that tingled in her scalp. Rising on her tiptoes, she was almost even with him—and his eyes were laser-focused on her mouth. She smirked. “Now who’s unprofessional?” (Honestly, she herself was about to be.)

“I’m feeling more in favor of a food stop.” His voice came out deep, hoarse. A nice stroke to her feminine ego.

She was half considering rewarding him right then and there, but their business contact started to open the door, and she was three feet away by the time he walked in.

Riley’s eyes were still on her. Not professional at all. And clearly not the end of their cat-and-wolf game.

Mercy couldn’t wait to pick it back up.

 

҉

 

After the meeting, Mercy bought her empanadas and brought them out to the truck. The masculine scent of Riley almost distracted her… almost. She was really hungry.

To her surprise, he didn’t try to steal any of her meal. So, with catlike capriciousness, she held out her takeout platter. “Here, you want some?”

His gaze flicked to the plate, back to her, obvious suspicion written all over his face. “I thought you didn’t want to share,” he said.

She shrugged. “Well, now I do, so enjoy it while it lasts.”

Once they’d demolished the pastries, Riley breached the space between them without single-minded determination. His hand went to the nape of her neck, and when she didn’t protest, he tugged her toward him, got his mouth on hers, his hands on her athletic curves. (He also got two platters of arepas, but those took a back seat to higher-priority needs.)

Thoughts blurred, he fumbled through her hair and pulled out the elastic band holding up her ponytail. Well, he pulled at it, and then it came half out, and then he pulled again and it snapped. Vivid red hair fell to frame her face. She made a noise of complaint, pulled back enough to mutter, “You think those grow on trees?”

“I’ll buy you a new one,” he compromised before devoting his attention to the underside of her jaw. The complaint became a pleased whimper. Her beautifully long fingers tunneled into his hair, explored under his shirt, tilted his chin for a better angle. A low noise rumbled in his chest, and she grinned into the kiss.

And when his fingertips glanced over sleek intricate lines on the small of her back, she purred, and he knew he wasn’t going to let her go.


	27. Tamsyn/Nate - Bakery AU

Hands full of dough, Tamsyn Mahaire looked up from the counter and saw a familiar man stride out of the antique store across the street. An automatic smile burst onto her face. “Nate’s coming,” she said to her current cashier, a high schooler named Lucas with eyes too serious for his age.

Those green eyes gleamed with humor at the moment, though. “I’m telling you, he’s got ulterior motives. You’d be better off pursuing a younger, more innocent man.”

Tammy laughed, rolling her eyes. “You, innocent? Don’t think I don’t know who stole the second batch of cookies last night.”

“It was Vaughn,” he said quickly, throwing one of his closest friends under the bus, but he grinned.

The bakery door opened with a happy little jingle, and Tamsyn’s breath caught in her throat just like it always did. Nathan Ryder had been making these stops weekly since the day she opened… then they became every other day… then daily. He was 29 years old to her 19, but just being around him made happiness unfurl in her chest.

“Morning, Tam,” he said, and she positively _grinned_.

“Want to try something new?” she offered without preamble.

“Yes please,” he said automatically, flashing a charming smile that made Lucas all but hiss. She smacked the boy on the back as she passed to pull out a slice of her latest experiment, a pineapple cheesecake blend. She slipped out from behind the counter to sit Nate at a table and set the plate and fork in front of him.

“Take a bite,” she ordered the man twice her size.

He took a bite.

His eyes widened a little, and he crammed in the next bite. Tammy choked on a laugh. “Good?”

Nate nodded emphatically, his mouth full.

 _Men,_ she thought fondly. This man in particular.

Despite the play hostility, the juvenile employees followed him around like kittens. They all seemed to feel the urge to please the cool older man, even Lucas, who usually ended up trying to out-stare and out-arm-wrestle any dominant personality he met.

And Tammy… Tammy was wrapped around his finger just as much. It would have been embarrassing if she hadn’t seen the way he watched her, the fondness of a best friend mixed with the possessive pride of a lover. And he watched her a lot. But he never did anything about it. He’d decided the ten-year gap was too wide to breach.

Nate, she learned quickly, had a heart of gold, but when he decided something, he dug his claws in and did not let go.

She rather wished he’d dig his claws into _her_.

Unfortunately, her favorite customer seemed to have a big red “X” on her as a love interest. A few times, she’d tested her “he doesn’t find me attractive” theory and come to work dressed in fitted, touchable sweaters and tight jeans: he hadn’t been able to take his eyes off her, and had all but snarled when Lucas made her a teasing offer of a date.

So he was attracted to her, at the very least.

What was a girl to do?

She wasn’t one for games; neither was he. She loved to talk to him, loved to touch him, loved to be near him, loved to watch him work with the kids, loved to butt heads with him. She’d made little effort to hide her overwhelming affection for him, so why wasn’t he picking up what she was setting down (or in this case, all but throwing at him)?

It burst out of her one evening while she was closing up.

“Do you like me or not?” Tamsyn demanded, hands coated in flour and now planted on her hips.

He started, then went preternaturally still. “Of course I like you.”

“No, I mean…” What was she, twelve? “Are you—do you want to _be_ with me?”

Nate watched her, frozen and unblinking like a cat on the hunt. “I always enjoy being around you.” Deadly serious.

She gritted her teeth and let out a muffled scream. “Are you _intentionally_ making this difficult?” Good Lord. “I want you so much it’s a physical ache,” she blurted, and was satisfied to see him jolt out of that hunting stillness. “Do you feel any pull at all?” He always kept a safe distance between them, avoided any sexual or even romantic conversations as if he thought the mere _mention_ of physical attraction might drive them to debauchery.

If it was because he was that repulsed by the idea of her as a woman, as a lover, she didn’t know what she would do. Crawl into a hole and die, maybe.

But the tendons in his neck stood out with a clench of his jaw. “You’re so young. You should have the freedom to roam, to explore.”

What did that even mean? “I don’t _want_ to explore.” She’d always been a home-and-family kind of girl, and she was starting to picture having that with Nate. That was a dangerous path to start on.

His eyes flashed, but with what, she couldn’t tell. “Maybe not right now. You might later. I’m not taking that option from you.”

She waited to hear the words that would break her heart— _I don’t think of you that way_ —but they didn’t come. Nate was many things, including honest. If he didn’t want her, he would say so. Suspicion clouded her vision. “But _do you feel what I feel?”_

He gritted his teeth. He _didn’t say no._ “It doesn’t _matter_ what I feel,” he forced out. “What matters is you. What’s best for you.”

Indignation bubbled in her blood. “And _you_ get to dictate that?”

“Yes,” he snapped.

And then _she_ snapped. “You are so full of crap, Nathan Ryder. I think _you’re_ what’s best for me!”

“I’ve seen what happens to people who commit too quickly. They spend the rest of their lives regretting it!”

“Regret _this,”_ she challenged, and then she closed the distance between them and pressed her lips hard against his, the contact messy and imperfect with her lack of experience. But oh, was it good. As if unable to resist, he tipped her chin to give him a better angle. A lost, high noise whined in the air for a brief second before she realized it was coming from her. She caressed one hand up his jaw, and the end-of-day stubble felt like electricity on her palm. She clutched his shoulders to keep from falling over from the sheer sensation of it.

One large, warm hand pulled her into him—and then he pulled away.

“We shouldn’t,” he said, voice low and hoarse.

Not done with him yet, she yanked him back for more, and at the second kiss he _moaned_ deep in his throat, almost a growl, and his hands came up to cup her face, and he opened his mouth to hers and she could have _died_ of happiness right there in the bakery kitchen. Flame fluttered in her stomach; she kissed him as hard as she could manage.

He didn’t pull away again. She knew they were both done for.

The next day he brought her orchids.


	28. Vasic/Ivy - Bonfire (Medieval AU)

Ivy pressed up against Vasic’s side, her profile glowing orange in the light of the bonfire as she all but thrust her hands into the flames. As small as she was, she didn’t have much insulation on her body, and her rough farming dress was wearing too thin to be much defense against the nighttime cold. In contrast, his old uniform, usually much too hot, kept him toasty warm. He’d already draped his jacket around her, and still she shivered.

Automatically she reached to hold his hand—and closed her fingers over empty space. Her stomach plummeted with the reminder: in the king’s most recent war, Vasic’s arm had been hit with a poisoned blade. Sent home without any care, he would have died had the town physician not amputated the limb. She’d been so furious with him, with the king for discarding him, with God for letting it happen.

 _But he’s here,_ she reminded herself, _he’s safe, and we’re together._

As if he could read her thoughts, he stroked his hand over her arm and pressed a kiss to her temple. “Stop thinking about it,” he told her in an undertone. “We can’t change it. And we’re managing.”

“Of course we are.” She turned and kissed him full on the mouth, stubborn and affectionate. “We can survive anything, you and I. As long as you don’t do anything _stupid_ like sign up for the draft again.”

He sighed. “You know I won’t.” He’d been in a bad place then, unable to see any light in the darkness. Now he had her, his best friend Aden, their burgeoning town of recovering military draftees that had been used and tossed aside like him. He had joy and purpose and _life_ , and he didn’t plan to throw that away anytime soon.

She softened against him and curled into his torso, her skirt catching on his boots. He reached to hold her closer to him, tucked her head under his chin, petted her tangled black curls. “I love you.” It had been so long since he’d allowed himself to care—he took every opportunity to remind them both that he did.

She bumped one small fist against his chest. “I love you too. I feel so much, I don’t know what to do with it.” The fire illuminated her as if she were sent straight from heaven; sometimes he wondered if she truly had been.

Some of the other villagers joined the community bonfire—scrawny dirt-smudged kids too young to have been used so terribly, hollow-eyed adults just beginning to know hope again. One small girl handed him a wildflower she’d picked herself; he took it with thanks and tucked it into Ivy’s hair. Already half-asleep, his mate mumbled and nuzzled into him.

And as rough as life could be, he knew he’d do anything to stay here with her.


	29. Lucas/Sascha - Pacific Rim AU

Sascha thought she might collapse when she came out of the jaeger simulation, and Lucas automatically reached to steady her. A split second later, he realized that he had acted on _her_ thought, not his. But instead of riling him up as it might have with anyone else, he all but purred at the intimacy. They’d been paired for a month now, and the melding of their minds had become an expected, _enjoyable_ aspect of their partnership.

This had been a longer training session than usual, though; Pentecost had been running them harder with each passing week. Lucas knew why: the younger, newer pairs looked up to them. Relatively speaking, they were alphas. To new mates like Faith and Vaughn, Dorian and Ashaya, Clay and Talin, even some older pairs like Nate and Tamsyn. (Thankfully, they weren’t the only leading pair. Hawke and Sienna had their own pack of followers, as did Aden and Zaira.) He and Sascha needed to get ahead and stay ahead if they were going to be decent leads. Also, he liked to irritate Hawke by beating him at the competitive simulations.

There were no more simulations over the weekend, though, so Lucas and Sascha had a few days to recover from the mental, physical, and emotional strains. Already he could feel her separating from him on the psychic plane, and the loss hurt worse than any of his aching overused muscles. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as if that would keep her with him longer, and she slipped a hand under his shirt for skin-to-skin contact.

Not as good as being psychically one, but it eased the pain of the rift.

Her stomach rumbled aggressively, and she was close enough he felt the vibration.

“Hungry, kitten?” he pretended to wonder, half-starved himself.

She nuzzled into his neck with a laugh. “How do you always know what I’m thinking?” she teased. “Must be that soul bond working its magic.”

He started them toward the cafeteria, and she fell into step, their feet padding in perfect synchronization. Her fingertips smoothed abstract shapes over his sore back; he tunneled his fingers through the unruly curls of her hair. When they’d picked out their food and seats, she slipped into his lap as easy as breathing, her legs entwining with his and one arm looping around his neck. This time it was he who kissed the curve of her neck into shoulders, who laced his arms around her torso like a seductive seat belt.

Plenty of people milled around, but neither Lucas nor Sascha cared. The extreme touch hunger was commonplace for separated copilots, and though the different pairs might tease each other about needing a room, no one truly minded the overt affection. It was simply part of life, an _important_ part.

Considering this and wanting her opinion, he instinctively reached out for the telepathic bond that connected them in the jaeger—but the mental limb had been hacked off into a stub, and pain sliced through his mind. He felt himself wince, and then his mate’s hand smoothed the hurt lines on his face.

“It’s okay.” She brushed her cheek against his. “I know.”

He exhaled hard. “I miss it.”

“So do I.” Still she petted him, as if gentling a riled wildcat. “Soon.”

They had an early morning session scheduled for Monday. He held on to the promise. “Soon.”

And, both of them still riding the fading effects of the long drift, he felt her rainbow-fireworks mental presence push him a pulse of love along the bond. The under-the-skin privileges soothed like nothing else could.


	30. Lucas/Sascha - Naya's First Christmas

A cold spell scattered snowflakes in the air to drift on the light breeze, the tiny flecks of white a sharp contrast against the vivid greens and deep browns of the eternal forest. The DarkRiver alpha’s aerie, cleverly hidden from any prying eyes, glowed on the inside, strung with white lights and vintage decorations that led up to the centerpiece: a Christmas tree of impossible size, crisscrossed with white and colored lights, hand-painted ornaments both passed down from Tammy and created new this season, with tiny leopards and flashes of leopard print scattered through it all.

It was Sascha’s masterpiece.

“Kitten,” Lucas whispered in his mate’s ear as she straightened the garland over one window, “it looks amazing. Now come to bed before I make you.”

She whispered back, so as not to wake the baby. “Just one more thing, Mr. Alpha.”

His arms slipped around her waist, gentle but unyielding. “It was ‘one more thing’ thirty things ago, Mrs. Alpha. _Bed.”_

Sighing out a laugh, she petted the side of his face with one hand and kissed him, soft and slow and content. “I just want it to be perfect.”

He nodded. “I understand.” Then mischief gleamed in those striking green eyes. “You know what else would be perfect?” He bent his head to breathe a few ideas in her ear that made her gasp.

 _“Lucas!_ There is a _child_ in this house!”

He grinned. “Yeah, how do you think she got here?”

Sascha smacked her mate on the chest. He laughed. But she let him pull her toward the bedroom for some intimate skin privileges before they passed out intertwined for the night.

Naya slept well, so her parents did too. It was a leisurely eight o’clock when the first cry nestled the baby in her father’s arms, and the trio walked out into the glowing open floor… and Naya’s babbles caught in a long, childish gasp. She twisted in Lucas’s arms to look at everything, eyes wide.

Sascha’s smile could have ended a war.

Lucas leaned in and kissed that smile, heart aching with the overflowing love he harbored for his empath and their child.


End file.
